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THE SOUL OF THE FAR EAST. i6mo, gilt 

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CHOSON: THE LAND OF THE MORNING 

CALM. A Sketch of Korea. Illustrated. 4to, 

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OCCULT JAPAN: THE WAY OF THE GODS. 

Illustrated. Crown 8vo, $1.50. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
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A POSSESSION BY THE GODS UPON ONTAKfe. Page 6 



OCCULT JAPAN 



OR 



THE WAY OF THE GODS 



AN ESOTERIC STUDY OF JAPANESE 
PERSONALITY AND POSSESSION 



BY 



PERCIVAL LOWELL 




pgBfargitegTO 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(Cbe Iftibersibc press, Cambrfooe 

1895 






\H 






Copyright, 1894, 
Bv PERCIVAL LOWELL. 

AH rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H, 0. Houghton & Co. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Ontak£ i 

Shinto 16 

Miracles 36 

Incarnations 97 

Pilgrimages and the Pilgrim Clubs . . .193 

The Gohei 230 

The Shrines of Ise 270 

Noumena : 

Self 278 

Selfhood a Force 285 

Possession 290 

• Will 298 

Self as Ideas 304 

Ideas a Mode of Motion . . . .307 

Ideas a Force 317 

Individuality 320 

The Japanese Character .... 323 

Dreams 332 

Hypnotic Trances 343 

Possession Trances 355 

The Shinto Gods 368 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



A Possession by the Gods upon Ontake 

Frontispiece 
A Buddhist Divine Possession . . . .162 
The Leader of a Pilgrim Band blessing the 

Holy Water 216 

A Pilgrim Club ascending Ontake . . . 224 



OCCULT JAPAN, 



ONTAKE. 



[pJCTjiN the heart of Japan, withdrawn 
pN Sgl alike by distance and by height from 
=eil th Q commonplaces of the every-day 
world, rises a mountain known as Ontake 
or the Honorable Peak. It is a fine volcanic 
mass, sundered by deep valley-clefts from the 
great Hida-Shinshiu range, amidst which it 
stands dignifiedly aloof. Active once, it has 
been inactive now beyond the memory of 
man. Yet its form lets one divine what it 
must have been in its day. For upon its 
summit are the crumbling walls of eight suc- 
cessive craters, piled in parapet up into the 
sky. 

It is not dead ; it slumbers. For on its 
western face a single solfatara sends heaven- 
ward long, slender filaments of vapor, faint 



2 OCCULT JAPAN. 

breath of what now sleeps beneath ; a vol- 
cano sunk in trance. 

Almost unknown to foreigners, it is well 
known to the Japanese. For it is perhaps 
the most sacred of Japan's many sacred 
peaks. Upon it, every summer, faith tells a 
rosary of ten thousand pilgrims. 

Some years ago I chanced to gaze from 
afar upon this holy mount ; and, as the 
sweep of its sides drew my eye up to where 
the peak itself stood hidden in a nimbus of 
cloud, had meant some day to climb it. 
Partly for this vision, more because of the 
probable picturesqueness of the route, I 
found myself doing so with a friend in Au- 
gust, 1 89 1. Beyond the general fact of its 
sanctity, nothing special was supposed to at- 
tach to the peak. That the mountain held 
a mystery was undreamed of. 

We had reached, after various vicissitudes, 
as prosaically as is possible in unprosaic 
Japan, a height of about nine thousand feet, 
when we suddenly came upon a manifesta- 
tion as surprising as it was unsuspected. 
Regardless of us, the veil was thrown aside, 
and we gazed into the beyond. We stood 
face to face with the gods. 



ONTAKE 3 

The fathoming of this unexpected revela- 
tion resulted in the discovery of a world of 
esoteric practices as significant as they were 
widespread. By way of introduction to them, 
I cannot do more simply than to give my 
own. Set as the scene of it was upon the 
summit of that slumbering volcano sunk in 
trance itself, a presentation to the gods could 
hardly have been more dramatic. 

We had plodded four fifths way up the 
pilgrim path. We had already passed the 
first snow, and had reached the grotto-like 
hut at the eighth station — the paths up all 
high sacred mountains in Japan being pleas- 
ingly pointed by rest-houses ; we were tar- 
rying there a moment, counting our heart- 
beats, and wondering how much more of the 
mountain there might be to come, for thick 
cloud had cloaked all view on the ascent, 
when three young men, clad in full pilgrim 
white, entered the hut from below, and, deaf 
to the hut-keeper's importunities to stop, 
passed stolidly out at the upper end : the 
hut having been astutely contrived to in- 
close the path, that not even the most as- 
cetic might escape temptation. The devout 
look of the trio struck our fancy. So, leav* 



4 OCCULT JAPAN. 

ing some coppers for our tea and cakes, 
amid profuse acknowledgment from the hut- 
keeper, we passed out after them. We had 
not climbed above a score of rods when we 
overtook our young puritans lost in prayer 
before a shrine cut into the face of the cliff, 
in front of which stood two or three benches 
conspicuously out of place in such a spot. 
The three young men had already laid aside 
their hats, mats, and staffs, and disclosed the 
white fillets that bound their shocks of jet- 
black hair. We halted on general principles 
of curiosity, for we had no inkling of what 
was about to happen. They were simply 
the most pious young men we had yet met, 
and they interested us. 

The prayer, which seemed an ordinary one, 
soon came to an end ; upon which we expected 
to see the trio pack up and be off again. 
But instead of this one of them, drawing 
from his sleeve a jroftet-wand, and certain 
other implements of religion, seated himself 
upon one 'of the benches facing the shrine. 
At the same time another sat down on a 
second bench facing the first, clasped his 
hands before his breast, and closed his eyes. 
The third reverently took post near by. 



ontakE. 5 

No sooner was the first seated than he 
launched into the most extraordinary per- 
formance I have ever beheld. With a spas- 
modic jerk, pointed by a violent guttural 
grunt, he suddenly tied his ten fingers into a 
knot, throwing his whole body and soul into 
the act. At the same time he began a mo- 
notonic chant. Gazing raptly at his digital 
knot, he prayed over it thus a moment ; then, 
with a second grunt, he resolved it into a 
second one, and this into a third and a fourth 
and a fifth, stringing his contortions upon 
his chant with all the vehemence of a string 
of oaths. Startlingly uncouth as the action 
was, the compelling intentness and sup- 
pressed power with which the paroxysmal 
pantomime was done, was more so. 

His strange action was matched only by 
the strange inaction of his vis-a-vis. The 
man did not move a muscle ; if anything, he 
grew momentarily more statuesque. And 
still the other's monotoned chant rolled on, 
startlingly emphasized by the contortion 
knots. 

At last the exorcist paused in his per- 
formance, and taking the go/iei-wand from 
beside him on the bench, placed it between 



6 OCCULT JAPAN. 

the other's hands, clenched one above the 
other. Then he resumed his incantation, 
the motionless one as motionless as ever. 
So it continued for some time, when all at 
once the hands holding the wand began to 
twitch convulsively ; the twitching rapidly- 
increased to a spasmodic throe which mo- 
mentarily grew more violent till suddenly it 
broke forth into the full fury of a seemingly 
superhuman paroxysm. It was as if the 
wand shook the man, not the man it. It 
lashed the air maniacally here and there 
above his head, and then slowly settled to a 
semi-rigid half-arm holding before his brow ; 
stiff, yet quivering, and sending its quivers 
through his whole frame. The look of the 
man was unmistakable. He had gone com- 
pletely out of himself. Unwittingly we had 
come to stand witnesses to a trance. 

At the first sign of possession, the exor- 
cist had ceased incanting and sat bowed 
awaiting the coming presence. When the 
paroxysmal throes had settled into a steady 
quiver — much as a top does when it goes 
off to sleep — he leaned forward, put a hand 
on either side the possessed's knees, and still 
bowed, asked in words archaically reverent 



ONTAKE. 7 

the name of the god who had thus deigned 
to descend. 

At first there was no reply. Then in a 
voice strangely unnatural, without being ex- 
actly artificial, the entranced spake : " I am 
Hakkai." 

The petitioner bent yet lower ; then rais- 
ing his look a little, preferred respectfully 
what requests he had to make ; whether the 
peak would be clear and the pilgrimage 
prove propitious, and whether the loved ones 
left at home would all be guarded by the 
god ? And the god made answer : " Till 
the morrow's afternoon will the peak be 
clear, and the pilgrimage shall be blessed." 

The man stayed bowed while the god 
spake, and when the god had finished speak- 
ing, offered up an adoration prayer. Then 
leaning forward, he first touched the pos- 
sessed on the breast, and then struck him 
on the back several times with increasing 
insistency. Under this ungodly treatment 
the possessed opened his eyes like one awak- 
ing from profound sleep. The others then 
set to and kneaded his arms, body, and legs, 
cramped in catalepsy, back to a normal state. 

No sooner was the ex-god himself again 



8 OCCULT JAPAN. 

than the trio changed places ; the petitioner 
moved into the seat of the entranced, the 
looker-on took the place of the petitioner, and 
the entranced retired to the post of looker- 
on. Then with this change of persons the 
ceremony was gone through with again to a 
similar possession, a similar interview, and 
a similar awakening. 

At the close of the second trance the 
three once more revolved cyclically and went 
through the performance for the third time. 
This rotation in possession so religiously 
observed was not the least strange detail of 
this strange drama. 

When the cycle had been completed, the 
three friends offered up a concluding prayer, 
and then, donning their outside accoutre- 
ments, started upward. 

Revolving in our minds what we had thus 
so strangely been suffered to see, we too 
proceeded, and, being faster walkers, had 
soon distanced our god-acquaintances. We 
had not been long upon the summit, how- 
ever, when they appeared again, and no 
sooner had they arrived, than they sat down 
upon some other benches similarly standing 
in the little open space before the tip-top 



ONTAKE. 9 

shrine, and went through their cyclical pos- 
sessions as before. We had not thought to 
see the thing a second time, and were almost 
as much astounded as at first. 

Our fear of parting with our young god- 
friends proved quite groundless. For on re- 
turning to the summit-hut after a climb 
round the crater rim, the first thing to catch 
our eyes amid its dim religious gloom was the 
sight of the pious trio once more in the full 
throes of possession. There were plenty of 
other pilgrims seated round the caldron 
fire, as well as some native meteorologists 
in an annex, who had been exiled there for 
a month by a paternal government to study 
the atmospheric conditions of this island in 
the clouds. Up to the time we met them the 
weather had been dishearteningly same, con- 
sisting, they informed us somewhat pathet- 
ically, of uninterrupted fog. The exorcists, 
however, took no notice of them, nor of any 
of the other pilgrims, nor did the rest of the 
company pay the slightest heed to the exor- 
cists ; all of which spoke volumes for the 
commonplaceness of the occurrence. 

We again thought we had seen our last of 
the gods, and again were we pleasurably 



10 OCCULT JAPAN. 

disappointed. At five the next morning we 
had hardly finished a shivery preprandial 
peep at the sunrise, — all below us a surging 
sea of cloud, — and turned once more into 
the hut, when there were the three indefat- 
igables up and communing again by way of 
breakfast, for they took none other, and an 
hour later we came upon them before the 
tip-top shrine, hard at it for the fifth time. 
And all this between four o'clock one after- 
noon and six the next morning. The cycle 
was not always completed, one of the three 
being much better at possession than the 
other two, and one much worse, but there 
were safely ten trances in the few hours that 
fringed their sleep's oblivion. 

And nobody, apparently, took any cogni- 
zance of what was going on, except us and 
the meteorologists, who came out to fra- 
ternize with us, and volunteered comments 
in a superior manner on the senselessness 
of the proceeding, — an imported attitude of 
mind not destitute of caricature. 

Truly the gods were gracious thus to 
descend so many times ; and truly devout 
their devotees to crave so much communion. 
Doubtless an inordinate desire for their 



ONTAKE. 1 1 

society is gratifying to the gods, but the 
frequency of the talks fairly took our breath 
away, though it had no perceptible effect on 
the young men's nor on the god's, even at 
that altitude. The god possessed his devo- 
tees with comparative ease ; which was edify- 
ing but exhausting ; for to let another in- 
habit one's house always proves hard on the 
furniture. And all this took place on top of 
a climb of ten thousand feet toward heaven. 
In spite of it, however, these estimable 
young men were equal to a tramp all over 
the place during the rest of the morning. 
They ascended religiously to all the crater- 
peaks, and descended as piously to all the 
crater - pools — and then started on their 
climb down and their journey home of three 
hundred and fifty miles, much of it to be 
done afoot. That night saw them not 
only off the mountain, but well on their way 
beyond. How far their holy momentum 
carried them without stopping I know not, 
for the last we saw of them was a wave of 
farewell as they passed the inn where we 
had put up for the night. But the most 
surprising part of the endurance lay in the 
fact that from the moment they began the 



12 OCCULT JAPAN. 

ascent of the mountain on the early morn- 
ing of the one day, till they were off it on the 
late afternoon of the next, they ate nothing 
and drank only water. 

Such was my introduction to the society 
of the gods ; and this first glimpse of it only 
piqued curiosity to more. No sooner back 
in town, therefore, than I made inquiry into 
the acquaintanceship I had so strangely 
formed upon the mountain, to receive the 
most convincing assurance of its divinity. 
The fact of possession was confirmed readily 
enough, but my desire for a private repeti- 
tion of the act itself was received at first 
with some mystery and more hesitation. 
However, with one man after another, offish- 
ness thawed, until, getting upon terms of 
cordiality with deity, it was not long before 
I was holding divine receptions in my own 
drawing-room. Exalted and exclusive as 
this best of all society unquestionably was, 
it proved intellectually, like more mundane 
society we agree to call the best, undeniably 
dull. I mention this not because I did not 
find it well worth knowing, but simply to 
show that it was every whit the company it 
purported to be. 



ONTAKE. 1 3 



II. 



The revelation thus strangely vouchsafed 
me turned out to be as far-reaching as it was 
sincere. There proved to exist a regular 
system of divine possession, an esoteric cult 
imbedded in the very heart and core of the 
Japanese character and instinct, with all the 
strangeness of that to us enigmatical race. 

That other foreigners should not pre- 
viously have been admitted to this company 
of heaven may at first seem the strangest 
fact of all. Certainly my introduction can- 
not be due to any special sanctity of my 
own, if I may judge by what my friends tell 
me on that subject. Nor can I credit it to 
any desire on my part to rise in the world, 
whether to peaks or preferments — an equally 
base ambition in either case — for Ontake, 
though not of every-day ascent, has been 
climbed by foreigners several times before. 
Rein, that indefatigable collector of facts 
and statistics, managed some years ago to 
get to the top of it and then to the bottom 
again without seeing anything. The old 
guide-book, in the person of an enthusiastic 
pedestrian, contrived to do the like. Other 



14 OCCULT JAPAN. 

visitors of good locomotive powers also ac- 
complished this feat without penetrating the 
secret of the mountain. And yet the trances 
were certainly going on all the time, and 
the guides who piloted these several gentle- 
men must have been well aware of the fact. 

The explanation is to be sought else- 
where. The fact is that Japan is still very 
much of an undiscovered country to us. It 
is not simply that the language proves so 
difficult that but few foreigners pass this 
threshold of acquaintance ; but that the 
farther the foreigner goes, the more he per- 
ceives the ideas in the two hemispheres to be 
fundamentally diverse. What he expects to 
find does not exist, and what exists he would 
never dream of looking for. 

Japan is scientifically an undiscovered 
country even to the Japanese, as a study of 
these possessions will disclose. For their 
importance is twofold : archaeologic no less 
than psychic. They are other-world mani- 
festations in two senses, and the one sense 
helps accentuate the other. For they are 
as essentially Japanese as they are essen- 
tially genuine. That is, they are neither 
shams nor importations from China or India, 



ONTAKE. 1 5 

but aboriginal originalities of the Japanese 
people. They are the hitherto unsuspected 
esoteric side of Shint5, the old native faith. 
That Japanese Buddhists also practice them 
is but appreciative Buddhist indorsement of 
their importance, as I shall show later. We 
must begin, therefore, with a short account 
of Shinto in general. 





SHINTO. 



I. 




HINTO, or the Way of the Gods, is 
the name of the oldest religious be- 
lief of the Japanese people. The 
belief itself indefinitely antedates its name, 
for it has come down to us from a time when 
sole possession of the field precluded denomi- 
nation. It knew no christening till Buddhism 
was adopted from China in the sixth century 
of our era, and was then first called Shinto, 
or the Way of the Gods, to distinguish it 
from Butsudo, or the Way of Buddha. 

If it thus acquired a name, it largely lost 
local habitation. For Buddhism proceeded 
to appropriate its possessions, temporal and 
spiritual. It had been both church and state. 
Buddhism became the state, and assumed 
the greater part of the churches ; paying 
Shinto the compliment of incorporating, with- 
out acknowledgment, such as it fancied of 



SHINTO. \J 

the Shinto rites, and of kindly recognizing 
the more popular Shinto gods for lower 
avatars of its own. Under this generous 
adoption on the one hand, and relegation to 
an inferior place in the national pantheon 
on the other, very little, ostensibly, was left 
of Shinto, — just enough to swear by. 

Lost in the splendor of Buddhist show, 
Shinto lay obscured thus for a millenium ; 
lingering chiefly as a twilight of popular 
superstition. At last, however, a new era 
dawned. A long peace, following the firm 
establishing of the Shogunate, turned men's 
thoughts to criticism, and begot the com- 
mentators, a line of literati, who, beginning 
with Mabuchi, in the early part of the eigh- 
teenth century, devoted themselves to a study 
of the past, and continued to comment, for a 
century and a half, upon the old Japanese tra- 
ditions buried in the archaic language of the 
Kojiki and the Nihongi, the history-bibles of 
the race. As science, the commentators' 
elucidations are chiefly comic, but their 
practical outcome was immense. Criticism 
of the past begot criticism of the present, 
and started a chauvinistic movement, which 
overthrew the Shogunate and restored the 



1 8 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Mikado — with all the irony of fate, since 
these litterateurs owed their existence to the 
patronage of those they overthrew. This 
was the restoration of 1868. Shint5 came 
back as part and parcel of the old. The 
temples Buddhism had usurped were puri- 
fied ; that is, they were stripped of Buddhist 
ornament, and handed over again to the 
Shinto priests. The faith of the nation's 
springtime entered upon the Indian summer 
of its life. 

This happy state of things was not to last 
Buddhism, and especially the great wave of 
western ideas, proved submerging. From 
filling one half the government, spiritual 
affairs were degraded, first to a department, 
then to a bureau, and then to a sub-bureau. 
The Japanese upper classes had found a new 
faith ; and Herbert Spencer was its prophet. 

But in the nation's heart the Shinto senti- 
ment throbbed on as strong as ever. A 
Japanese cabinet minister found this out to 
his cost. In 1887, Mori Arinori, one of the 
most advanced Japanese new-lights, then 
minister of state for education, went on a 
certain occasion to the Shrines of Ise, and 
studiously treated them with disrespect. It 



SHINTO. 19 

was alleged, and apparently on good author- 
ity, that he trod with his boots on the mat 
outside the portal of the palisade, and then 
poked the curtain apart with his walking- 
stick. He was assassinated in consequence ; 
the assassin was cut down by the guards, 
and then Japan rose in a body to do honor, 
not to the murdered man, but to his mur- 
derer. Even the muzzled press managed to 
hint on which side it was, by some as curious 
editorials as were ever penned. As for the 
people, there were no two ways about it; 
you had thought the murderer some great 
patriot dying for his country. Folk by thou- 
sands flocked with flowers to his grave, and 
pilgrimages were made to it, as to some 
shrine. It is still kept green ; still to-day 
the singing-girls bring it their branches of 
plum blossoms, with a prayer to the gods 
that a little of the spirit of him who lies 
buried there may become theirs : that spirit 
which they call so proudly the Yamato Ko- 
koro, the heart of old Japan. 

For in truth ShintS is so Japanese it will 
not down. It is the faith of these people's 
birthright, not of their adoption. Its folk- 
lore is what they learned at the knee of the 



20 OCCULT JAPAN. 

race-mother, not what they were taught from 
abroad. Buddhist they are by virtue of be- 
lief ; Shinto by virtue of being. 

Shinto is the Japanese conception of the 
cosmos. It is a combination of the worship 
of nature and of their own ancestors. But 
•the character of the combination is ethno- 
logically instructive. For a lack of psychic 
development has enabled these seemingly 
diverse elements to fuse into a homogeneous 
whole. Both, of course, are aboriginal in- 
stincts. Next to the fear of natural phe- 
nomena, in point of primitiveness, comes the 
fear of one's father, as children and savages 
show. But races, like individuals, tend to 
differentiate the two as they develop. Now, 
the suggestive thing about the Japanese is, 
that they did not do so. Filial respect lasted, 
and by virtue of not becoming less, became 
more, till it filled not only the whole sphere 
of morals, but expanded into the sphere of 
cosmogony. To the Japanese eye, the uni- 
verse itself took on the paternal look. Awe 
of their parents, which these people could 
comprehend, lent explanation to dread of 
nature, which they could not. Quite co- 
gently, to their minds, the thunder and the 



SHINTO. 21 

typhoon, the sunshine and the earthquake, 
were the work not only of anthropomorphic 
beings, but of beings ancestrally related to 
themselves. In short, Shinto, their explana- 
tion of things in general, is simply the patri- 
archal principle projected without perspective 
into the past, dilating with distance into 
deity. 

That their dead should thus definitely live 
on to them is nothing strange. It is par- 
alleled by the way in which the dead live 
on in the thought of the young generally. 
Actual personal immortality is the instant 
inevitable inference of the child-mind. The 
dead do thus survive in the memories of the 
living, and it is the natural deduction to 
clothe this subjective idea with objective 
existence. 

Shinto is thus an adoration of family 
wraiths, or of imputed family wraiths ; im- 
aginaries of the first and the second order in 
the analysis of the universe. Buddhism 
with its ultimate Nirvana is in a sense the 
antithesis of this. For while simple Shinto 
regards the dead as spiritually living, philo- 
sophic Buddhism regards the living as spir- 
itually dead ; two aspects of the same shield. 



22 OCCULT JAPAN. 

The Japanese thus conceive themselves 
the direct descendants of their own gods. 
Their Mikado they look upon as the lineal 
descendant of Niniginomikoto, the first God 
Emperor of Japan. And the gods live in 
heaven much as men, their descendants, do 
on earth. The concrete quality of the Jap- 
anese mind has barred abstractions on the 
subject. The gods have never so much as 
laid down a moral code. " Obey the Mika- 
do," and otherwise "follow your own heart" 
is the sum of their commands ; as parental 
injunctions as could well be framed. So is 
the attitude of the Japanese toward their 
gods filially familiar, an attitude which 
shocks more teleologic faiths, but in which 
they themselves see nothing irreverent. In 
the same way their conception of a future 
life is that of a definite immaterial extension 
of the present one. 

To foreign students in consequence, Shinto 
has seemed little better than the ghost of a 
belief, far too insubstantial a body of faith to 
hold a heart. To ticket its gods and pigeon- 
hole its folk-lore has appeared to be the end 
of a study of its cult. 

Nor is its outward appearance less unin- 



SHINTO. 23 

vitingly skeleton-like. With a deal barn of 
a building for temple, a scant set of deal 
paraphernalia, and so to speak a deal of 
nothing else, its appearance certainly leaves 
something to be desired. For in all save 
good Puritan souls, the religious idea craves 
sensuous setting. Feeling is the fuel of 
faith which sights, sounds, and perfumes fan 
into flame. Sense may not be of the essence 
of religion, but incense is. 

II. 

In but one thing is Shint5 patently rich 
— in gods. It has as much to worship as it 
has little to worship with. It has more gods 
than its devotees know what to do with. 
From the Goddess of the Sun to the gods of 
rice and agriculture, few things in heaven or 
earth stand unrepresented in its catholic 
pantheon. Biblical biography puts the num- 
ber roundly at eighty myriads, but in Jap- 
anese speech " eighty" and "myriad" are 
neither of them mathematical terms, the one 
being a mystic number and the other a con- 
ventional confession of arithmetical incom- 
petency ; both expressions being rigorously 
rendered in English by the phrase "no end." 



24 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Nobody ever pretended to count the gods. 
Indeed, to do so would be pious labor lost ; 
for the roll is being constantly increased by 
promotions from the ranks. Any one at 
death may become a god, and it is of the 
entailed responsibilities of greatness that the 
very exalted must do so. 

Of course no merely finite man can pos- 
sibly worship so infinite a number of deities, 
though time be to him of oriental limitless- 
ness. So each makes his choice of inti- 
mates, and clubs the rest in a general peti- 
tion, from time to time, to prevent accidents. 

His first choice is made for him by his 
parents. A week after birth the babe is 
presented at the temple {miya mairi) and 
put under the protection of some special 
deity. The god's preference is not con- 
sulted in the affair; he becomes tutelary 
god on notification, as a matter of course. 

Next in importance to the tutelary god is 
the patron god. For every branch of human 
industry is specially superintended by some 
god. Men may deem it beneath them to be 
in business, but the gods do not. Each has 
his trade, and spends much time looking 
after his apprentices. But it is work with- 



SHINTO. 25, 

out worry, befitting the easy-going East ; 
the god of honest labor being portrayed as a 
jolly, fat fisherman, very comfortably seated,, 
chuckling at having just caught a carp. 

Pleasures, too, have their special gods, 
with whom perforce their notaries are on 
peculiarly intimate terms, inasmuch as such 
gods are very boon-companion patrons of the 
sport. Furthermore, every one chooses his 
gods for a general compatibility of temper 
with himself. He thus lives under con- 
genial guardianship all his life. 

Simple as such conceptions are, there is 
something fine in their sweet simplicity. 
The very barrenness of the faith's buildings 
has a beauty of its own, touched as it is by 
Japanese taste. Through those gracefully 
plain portals a simple life here passes to a 
yet simpler one beyond ; and the solemn 
cryptomerea lend it all the natural grandeur 
that so fittingly canopies the old. 

So are the few Shinto rites perfect in 
effect. Finished fashionings from afar past, 
they are so beautifully complete, that one 
forgets the frailty of the conception in the 
rounded perfection of the form. 

One sees at once how aboriginal all this 



26 OCCULT JAPAN. 

is. Childish conceptions embalmed in an 
exquisite etiquette ; so Shinto might have 
been ticketed. 

III. 

But the mythologic mummy showed no 
evidence of soul. By the soul of a faith, as 
opposed to its mere body of belief, I mean 
that informing spirit vouchsafed by direct 
communion between god and man which all 
faiths proclaim of themselves, and pooh-pooh 
of all the others. It was this soul that so 
unexpectedly revealed itself to me upon 
Ontake. 

We must now see what the Japanese con- 
ceive this soul to be. Now Shinto philoso- 
phy is not the faith's strong point. The 
Japanese are artists, not scientists. And in 
their revelations their gods show the same 
simple and attractive character. If, there- 
fore, the Shinto scheme of things seem at 
times incompatible with itself, the gods them- 
selves are responsible, not I, errors and omis- 
sions on my part excepted. For I have it all 
from one whose authority is nothing short 
of the god's own words, vouchsafed to him 
in trance, my friend the high priest of the 



SHINTO. 27 

Shinshiu sect. So that my knowledge of 
the subject is but second-hand divine, much 
nearer the source of inspiration than I can 
ever hope in reason to come again. 

To begin with, then, all things in heaven 
and earth are composed of three elements, 
{gotai or karada) body, (shinki) mind or 
spirit, and {tamashii) soul. Stocks and 
stones, plants, animals, and some men have 
no soul, being made up entirely of body and 
mind. The behavior of some men seems to 
lend support to this theory. Gods, on the 
other hand, are bodiless and consist of spirit 
and soul, except the supreme god, Ame-no- 
minaka-nashi-no-mikoto, who is all soul. 

SJiinki, lit. god-spirit, is related to tama- 
shii, soul, much as a substance with its 
attributes is related to the same substance 
without them. If you can manage the con- 
ception of the first of these philosophic va- 
cuities, you will find no difficulty with the 
second. Furthermore, spirit and soul may 
coexist separately in one body. As the spirit 
clarifies, that is, becomes more and more 
blank, it approaches soul and finally be- 
comes it. 

The one thing common, therefore, to all 



28 OCCULT JAPAN. 

things, both of this world and the next, is 
spirit. Everything, from gods to granite, 
has its god-spirit. Each spirit is as separate 
and particular as the body it inhabits ; yet 
it is capable of indefinite expansion or con- 
traction, of permeating matter and of going 
and coming according to laws of its own. 
It may, perhaps, be looked upon provision- 
ally as a gas. 

Spirit never dies, it only circulates. 
When a man or animal or plant dies its 
body duly decays, but its spirit either lives 
on alone or returns to those two great res- 
ervoirs of spirit, the gods Takami-musubi- 
no-kami and Kami-musubi-no-kami. From 
them a continual circulation of spirit is kept 
up through the universe. Whether a spirit's 
personality persists or not is a matter de- 
cided by the supreme god, and depends upon 
the greatness or the goodness of the de- 
funct. For example, Kan Shojo, the god of 
calligraphy, has persisted thus posthumously 
for almost a thousand years. It is to be 
hoped for the sake of Japan's beautiful 
brushmanship, that he will continue to sur- 
vive and be worshiped for some time yet. 

Spirit is by no means necessarily good. 



SHINTO. 29 

It is manifest that, viewed from the human 
standpoint, some things are harmful, some 
harmless, both among plants, animals, and 
men. The harmful ones are therefore bad ; 
the harmless ones may or may not be good. 
Why certain inoffensive animals, for exam- 
ple, have got a bad name, or even a good 
one, is as inscrutable as the cause of the 
gender of Latin nouns. They are given a 
bad name, and that is cause enough. It will 
be observed that in this system of ethics 
man has no monopoly of original sin. 

Similarly the gods themselves are divided 
into the sheep and the goats, but by a mer- 
ciful dispensation of something or other the 
good gods are mightier than the bad. In- 
deed, a certain evolutionary process is going 
on throughout the universe, by which the 
bad spirits grow good and the good better. 
It is described as a continued clarification, 
terminating in total blankness. 

Spirit not only circulates after death ; it 
may do so during life. Usually it does not 
wander in this way, simply because it is at 
home where it is and inertia keeps it there. 
But in some cases it is not so wedded to the 
body with which it is associated, and the 



30 OCCULT JAPAN. 

purer it becomes the more is it given to 
occasional volatilizing. 

Now esoteric Shinto consists in compel- 
ling this spirit to circulate for particular ends. 
This is not a difficult matter, if it is properly- 
undertaken. It is accomplished through self- 
purification. For the degree of purity deter- 
mines the degree of possession. Possession 
is simply the entrance into one body of an- 
other body's spirit, and the simultaneous 
expulsion or subjugation of the spirit origi- 
nally there. 

This shift of spirit may take place between 
any two bodies in nature. Nor does such 
interchange differ in kind, no matter what 
the bodies be. But for the sake of psy- 
chology rather than religion, we may profit- 
ably consider it under the two aspects of 
god-possession of things and god-possession 
of people. The one gives rise to the mira- 
cles ; the other to the incarnations. Both 
kinds of possession occurred spontaneously, 
that is, at the will of the gods, in olden 
times, and presumably so occur at the pres- 
ent day ; but the gods have also graciously 
granted pure men the power to pray for them 
acceptedly. 



SHINTO. 3 1 

In the case of people the act of possession 
is nowadays known as kami-oroshi, kami- 
utsushi, or kami-ntsuri, that is, " the causing 
of the god to come down," "the causing the 
god to transform" or "god transformation." 
The first two names thus view the thing 
from the human standpoint, the last from 
the divine. But this is matter of the tempo- 
rary point of view, all three expressions, 
with others such as nori-utsuri, "to change 
vehicles," being used indifferently according 
to the speaker's preference. 

Possession may be partial, complete, or 
intermediary, that is, the alien spirit may 
share the head of the person with the native 
spirit, or it may drive it out, or it may drive 
it down into the belly. But such degrees of 
tenancy are grades rather of the proficiency 
attained during novitiate into the cult. In 
actual possessions the chief distinction con- 
sists in the character of the god who comes. 

Possession of things are in like manner 
possible through purity in the person who 
would bring them about. They are called 
kamiwasa or god-arts, because originally 
only the gods, and now only the gods and 
the godly, can perform them. » 



32 OCCULT JAPAN. 



IV. 



Before entering upon the miracles, it is 
necessary to explain the present position of 
Shinto with regard to these esoteric prac- 
tices generally. For, though as we shall see 
when we look later into their history, it is 
probable that originally they were the com- 
mon property of all Shintoists, they are not 
so to-day. 

Of the present ten sects that compose the 
Shinto church, only two practice the pos- 
session-cult, the Shinshiu and the Mitake 
sects. That they do so while the others do 
not is not matter of creed, but of tradition. 
Though called sects, the Shintd sects are 
not properly so much sects as sections. For 
they differ not by differently worshiping an 
identical god, but by identically worshiping 
different gods. Each of them likewise wor- 
ships, though with less assiduity, all the oth- 
ers' gods. Each looks specially to the great 
shrine dedicated to its special gods ; and all 
but two, one of which is a sort of general 
bureau of church organism, make pilgrimages 
to their shrine once or twice a year. 

These sects date only from since the time 



SHINTO. 33 

of the revival of pure Shinto twenty years 
ago. But under another name the profes- 
sors of the cult hold it in unbroken practice 
from the far past. Whether during the time 
of Shinto' s long eclipse the possession cult 
was kept up by the few remaining pure Shin- 
toists, if indeed there can be said to have 
been any pure Shintoists then at all, is doubt- 
ful, although the priests to-day assert that it 
was always practiced by the pious in secret. 
Certain it is, however, that during the lapse 
of Shinto from national regard practice of 
the cult passed to all intents and purposes to 
a hybrid of Shinto and Buddhism known as 
Ryobu or Both, because it was indeed manu- 
factured of both creeds. 

The great Kobo Daishi is the reputed 
father of Ryobu. This worthy soul — who 
by the way was never called Kobo Daishi 
while he was called anything ; he was 
known as Kukai so long as he was known at 
all — was the founder of the Shingon sect 
of Buddhism in Japan. He seems to have 
been singularly energetic. The peaks he 
climbed, the pictures he painted, and the 
divers deeds of one sort and another which 
he accomplished, would have kept Methuse- 



34 OCCULT JAPAN. 

lah on the jump for the whole of his millen- 
nial life. Nevertheless, he found time amid 
it all to invent Ryobu. His invention con- 
sisted in a judicious hodge-podge of Shinto 
and Buddhist popularities. His diligence 
met its reward. The newly invented faith 
instantly became very popular, because it let 
everybody in. It was essentially an open 
air faith, much given to mountaineering, a 
trait it might be supposed to have inherited 
from its father, were it not instinctive in a 
Japanese to climb. 

Ryobu has more than one sect, but it was 
only the Ontake sect of the belief that prac- 
ticed god-possession. It kept the cult alive 
for a thousand years, and then, when pure 
Shinto was revived at the time of the Resto- 
ration, and hybrids were abolished by impe- 
rial edict, the Ontake Ryobuists came back 
again into the Shinto fold. 

Besides Ryobu, some of the Buddhist sects 
early saw the advantage of being intimate 
with deity, and Kobo Daishi, after being 
taught the means to it by the Shinto Em- 
peror Sanga, so it is said, not satisfied with 
inventing Ryobu and incorporating it in that, 
boldly took it for his own Shingon sect of 



SHINTO. 35 

Buddhism. And the Shingon sect still prac- 
tices the cult to-day. Denkyo Daishi, the 
founder of the Tendai sect, was likewise 
captivated by it and incorporated it into his 
belief. Lastly, the Nichiren sect learned the 
art and indulges in it now more than either 
of the other two. 

We thus find at the present time among 
the professors of the cult some Shintoists, 
some Ryobuists, and some Buddhists, each 
claiming it stoutly for its own. 






MIRACLES. 
I. 

ULLARDS will always deem deli- 
cacy incompatible with strength. 
To touch a subject lightly is for 
them not to touch it at all. Yet the phrase 
" dead in earnest " might perhaps hint to 
them that there is more virtue in liveliness 
than they suspect. It is quite possible to see 
the comic side of things without losing sight 
of their serious aspect. In fact, not to see 
both sides is to get but a superficial view of 
life, missing its substance. So much for the 
people. As for the priests, it is only neces- 
sary to say that few are more essentially sin- 
cere and lovable than the Shinto ones ; and 
few religions in a sense more true. With 
this preface for life-preserver I plunge boldly 
into the miracles. 

Kamiwaza or god-arts are of many sorts, 
but to Japanese piety are all of a kind, 



MIRACLES. 37 

though some are spectacular, some merely 
useful. Causing the descent of the Thun- 
der-God ; calling down fire from Heaven ; 
rooting burglars to the spot, and so forth, 
to say nothing of killing snakes and bring- 
ing them to life again, together with innu- 
merable like performances, are all included 
in the category, and are all simple enough 
affairs to the truly good. Nichiren, for ex- 
ample, broke in two the blade of his 
would-be executioner by exorcism taught 
him of the Shinto priests. The fact without 
the explanation may be read of in histories 
of Japan. 

In Shinto the miracles are not so impor- 
tant matters as the incarnations ; for good 
reason, since the god but shows his power in 
the one case, his self in the other. Yet the 
church takes pleasure in displaying them for 
pious purposes. Any fete-day of the possess- 
ing sects is more likely than not to have a 
miracle for central show, and for his great 
semi-annual festivals my friend the head 
priest of the Shinshiu sect has announce- 
ment of a couple of them printed regularly 
as special attractions on his invitation cards. 

So far as piety classifies them at all, it 



38 OCCULT JAPAN. 

does so according to their scenic effect or 
for the difficulty of doing them. From a 
psychologic point of view, however, they 
fall very conveniently under two heads : sub- 
jective miracles and objective ones. An 
account of the former may properly precede, 
since it includes those which, on the whole, 
are considered the greater. 

Chief among the subjective miracles are 
what are called collectively the Sankei or 
the three great rites. The bond connecting 
the trio is apparently purely extrinsic, con- 
sisting solely in agreement in greatness. In 
consequence, on very important festivals 
lasting two or three days, they are performed 
in turn successively. 

II. 

The first and simplest of these Three 
Great Rites is the Kugadachi or Ordeal by 
Boiling Water. 

The word kugadachi is archaic Japanese. 
In Hepburn's dictionary a dagger stabs it 
obsolete. Furthermore, the departed is 
given no character, being epitaph ed solely 
in the Japanese sidescript. Such absence 
of ideograph implies for the expression an 



MIRACLES. 39 

age antedating the time when the Japanese 
learned to write ; an inference fully borne 
out by folk-lore. For the ordeal is men- 
tioned more than once in the Kojiki, and 
seems to have been quite popular in pre 
historic times. In those direct days it was 
applied as touchstone to actual guilt ; in 
these more teleologic times merely as test 
of theoretic guilelessness. 

The arrangements for the rite are prim- 
itively picturesque. A huge iron pot, as it 
might be some witches' caldron, is cere- 
moniously set in the midst of the garden or 
court. About it is then built a magic 
square. Four cut bamboo, tufted at their 
tops, are stuck into the ground some eight 
feet apart. From frond to frond are hung 
hempen ropes. This makes an airy sort of 
palisade, designed to keep out the undesir- 
able devils. Just outside of the space thus 
inclosed is placed a deal table, on which one 
or more deal boxes, open on the side, make 
consecrated pedestals for the gohei. The 
gohei are very important affairs, of which I 
shall have much to say later. For the mo- 
ment it will suffice to state that they are zig- 
zag strips of paper festooning a wand, and 



40 OCCULT JAPAN. 

are the outward and visible symbols of the 
gods. In front of them upon the table 
stands a saucer of salt ; while behind them 
bamboo fronds stuck into stands rise into a 
background of plumes. 1 

Spring water is then brought in and 
poured into the caldron. On my first oc- 
casion of witnessing the miracle I was at 
this point graciously permitted to dab my 
little finger into the water. I quite fail now 
to see why I desired to do so, but I am very 
glad I did. My request turned out a most 
discreet indiscretion, productive of much 
spiritual significance later on. 

A fire was then kindled beneath, and we, 
professionals and amateurs, stood round 
about the square, watching for the water to 
boil. When at last the steam started to 
rise, the officiating acolyte emerged from 
the holy bathhouse near by, where he had 
been purifying himself, clad in a single 
white robe. That is, the robe was white 

1 The wood I have here and elsewhere translated " deal," 
on account of its appearance, which is simple to a degree, 
is the hinokiy lit. " sun-wood," the Thuya obtusa, or Arbor 
vitce. Its name sun-wood is said by some priestly exposi- 
tors to be due to its having furnished the prehistoric two 
sticks from whose rubbing first came fire. 



MIRACLES. 41 

theoretically ; practically it was a post-dilu- 
vian gray, a hue which the rite soon suf- 
ficiently explained. 

On entering the mystic square he clapped 
his hands ; the invariable Japanese method 
this, of summoning anybody from gods to 
servants. It is worth noting here, as instan- 
cing the familiar terms on which the Japanese 
stand with their gods, that they should thus 
indifferently summon deities and domestics. 

The young priest then started to circum- 
ambulate the kettle through a whole series 
of rites, each made up of an endlessly similar 
basis of speech and action. Now it is all 
very well to preach against vain repetitions, 
but with anthropomorphic gods, as with 
ordinary mortals, it simply has to be done if 
one would succeed in one's request. The 
Shinto priests realize this fact, and thor- 
oughly act upon it, too thoroughly to suit 
one who looks impatiently past the rep- 
etitions to their result. Like all good works, 
its practical effect is on the worker. 

Pantomime and prayer wove the double 
strand on which his more particular beads of 
rosary were told ; uncouth finger-twists and 
monotonic formulae pointed by expressive 



42 OCCULT JAPAN. 

guttural grunts. Upon this undercurrent 
of wellnigh automatic action the man was 
insensibly carried along through successive 
cycles of rite. Beginning at the north end 
of the square, he first made incantation 
facing the caldron ; then walking absorbedly 
round to the south, digitating as he did so, 
he faced the kettle and repeated his spell. 
Continuing as before, he went through the 
same performance at the west side ; then at 
the east, the northwest, the northeast, and 
the southwest, making thus at least a half 
circuit between each point. All this was 
most particular ; though as a matter of fact 
the orientation of the points was hypothet- 
ical. 

This constituted the simple motif, as it 
were. No sooner was it completed, than he 
started on it again with variations. First it 
was salt. From the saucer on the stand he 
helped himself to a handful of this, and mak- 
ing circuits of the kettle as before, deposited 
a pinch of it at each of the compass points 
in turn, digitating with the free hand as he 
did so, after the manner of one enjoining 
implicit compliance with his act. After this 
he tossed more salt into the air toward each 
of the four quarters of the heavens. 



MIRACLES. 43 

In the same way he made the rounds with 
a flint and steel, scattering sparks at the 
proper places. Then he took the gohei- 
wand, and exorcised the water in like fash- 
ion, by cuts in the air of imprecatory vio- 
lence. Lastly, he made the circuit with two 
bamboo fronds, one in each hand, which he 
dipped into the seething liquid, and then, 
lifting them loaded with boiling water, lashed 
the air above his head, the spray falling in 
a scalding shower-bath all over him. This 
he did north, south, east, west, # and then 
over again from the beginning, on and on, 
in one continuous round. 

To this boiling shower-bath there seemed 
no end. Round and round the man went, 
religiously compassing his points, repeating 
the scalding douche at each with ever-grow- 
ing self-abandonment. Up to this final phase 
of the affair he had seemed to be carrying 
on the rite ; now, the rite seemed to be 
carrying him on. Still, circuit after circuit 
he made, his exaltation rising with each fresh 
dip; till he was as one possessed, lashing 
maniacally first the water and then the air 
with the fronds, scattering the scalding 
douche not only over himself, but over all 



44 OCCULT JAPAN. 

the innocent bystanders as well, giving them 
thus, by the way, the most convincing proof 
of the genuineness of the feat. Higher and 
higher rose the pitch of his possession till, 
at last, nature could no farther go, and from 
the acme of his paroxysm he all at once col- 
lapsed into a lump of limp rag upon the 
ground. The others rushed in and bore him 
away, the wilted semblance of a man. 

While he was gone to prepare himself once 
more for this world, the high priest explained 
to me the spirit of the rite. 

The moon, it seems, is the cause of it all ; 
a first step in elucidation, to follow which 
requires less stretch of the western imagina- 
tion than the next succeeding one. For that 
lunacy-inducing body is, it appears, the origin 
of water ; on the Incus a non principle, we 
must suppose, inasmuch as it has none to 
speak of. But, whatever the cause, the spirit 
of water resides in the moon ; the spirit of 
cold water, be it understood, cold water and 
hot water being, in Japanese eyes, quite dif- 
ferent substances with different names. The 
spirit of hot water is the spirit of fire. This 
rose to the water in the caldron from the 
fire below at the moment the water boiled. 



MIRACLES. 45 

"Now," as the priest quaintly put it, "just 
as there are veins in man's body, and fissures 
in the earth, so are there arteries in the air ; 
and to each spirit its own arteries. When, 
therefore, the spirit of water is properly be- 
sought, it descends from its abode, the moon, 
by its appropriate paths, and dispossesses 
the spirit of fire, which sinks back again to 
the charcoal whence it came." And of course 
the hot water is no longer hot. 

This happy result is worked to easier per- 
fection amid the purity of the peaks. It is, 
of course, an irrelevant detail that water at 
those altitudes should boil at a lower tem- 
perature. The thin air of the peaks is, for 
purely pious reasons, conducive to all manner 
of etherealization. 

In addition to the lunar action on the 
boiling water, the performer himself is, so 
the priest said, temporarily possessed by the 
lunar spirit, and so is rendered insensible 
to the heat, which, as we just saw, does not 
exist, so that the second action might seem 
to savor of the superfluous. A double nega- 
tive of the sort appears, however, to make 
assurance doubly sure. 

When the man returned, clothed and in 



46 OCCULT JAPAN. 

his right mind once more, he was asked 
whether he felt the heat of the water during 
the ordeal. He replied that sometimes he 
did and sometimes he did not ; in this in- 
stance he said he had felt nothing. He was 
a frail-looking youth, of ecstatic eye, evidently 
a good "subject," though still in the early 
stages of his novitiate. The head priest, a 
much stronger man, and an adept, said he 
always felt the water, but not the heat of it ; 
an interesting distinction. 

Here came in the importance of my dabble 
in the basin. Though it had been but to the 
extent of a little finger, — and that by re- 
ligious permission, — it had, it appeared, par- 
tially spoiled the miracle on that side of the 
caldron, preventing the water there from 
becoming as cold as elsewhere. For the 
acolyte averred that he had perceived a dif- 
ference between the two. But he had just 
said that he had not felt the heat of any part 
of it. He had therefore detected a distinc- 
tion without a difference, a degree of divinity 
quite transcending the simply not feeling at 
all. Yet he was unconscious at the time, 
and conscientious afterward. By partially 
spoiling the miracle, then, it would seem 
that I had considerably improved it. 



MIRACLES. 47 

III. 

The second miracle of the Three Great 
Rites is the Hiwatari or the Walking Bare- 
foot over a Bed of Live Coals. 

To the faithful this is one of the regular 
stock miracles, and when you become well 
known to the profession for a collector of 
such curios, you shall have offers of per- 
formance in your own back-yard. If also you 
be friend to the high-priest of the Shinshiu 
sect, you may have a chance to witness it in 
spring and autumn in special glory in the 
grounds of the sect's head temple in town. 
There, beside the miracle itself, shall you see 
its scarcely less curious setting, an intent 
multitude framing the walkers round about, 
worked up at last to part participation itself. 
For in its working the miracle is eminently 
democratic. Even professionally it is not a 
star performance, but an exhibition by the 
whole company. Fellowship, they say, adds 
to the purity of the rite. It certainly con- 
duces to exaltation. In the second place, 
performance is not confined to the profes- 
sionals. They indeed have the pas, but 
after they have thus broken the ice the pop- 



48 OCCULT JAPAN. 

ulace is permitted to indulge itself in the 
same way to satiety. For while the bed is 
possessed by the god any sufficiently pure 
person may tread it with impunity to his 
cuticle and great gain to his good luck. 
The two go together. The difficulty comes 
in, in accurately estimating the degree of 
one's own purity. If one be pure enough he 
will cross unscathed ; if not, his more mate- 
rial understanding will speedily acquaint him 
of his deficiency. It proves a sad trial to 
doubting Thomases. In their case, to pre- 
vious anguish of spirit is added after agony 
of sole. 

The bed to be traversed is usually from 
twelve to eighteen feet long and from three 
to six feet wide. The width of the bed is 
not so vital to the miracle as the length of 
it ; the length it is that has to be walked 
over and grows tedious. And the purity 
needed to do this increases pari passu with 
the length — only in geometrical progres- 
sion. Here it is not the first step that costs, 
but the last one. 

In Ryobu the bed of state is an eight- 
poster. Eight bamboo, still fronded, are 
stuck into the ground, making slender posts 



MIRACLES. 49 

to a palisade about the pyre. Between 
them runs a hempen rope from frond to frond 
about five feet above the ground. From 
this hang forty-four goJiei. These details 
are important in ordinary cases, as the bam- 
boo are dedicated to the eight heavenly 
dragons, rainmakers and drawers of water 
generally. But if the ground be holy, such 
outer guarding becomes unnecessary ; and 
indeed it is a fundamental principle in eso- 
terics that the purer the performer the less 
paraphernalia he needs. Pure Shinto is 
more simple in its rites than Ryobu. 

Ordinarily the bed is made as follows : 
A mattress of straw mats is laid upon the 
ground, and on this a sheet of seashore sand. 
This is done in order that everything may 
be as pure as possible. On top of this sheet 
are laid first twigs and then sticks criss-cross, 
after the usual approved principle of laying 
a fire. In the very centre of the pyre a 
gohei is stood up on its wand. 

In theory the bed is laid four-square to the 
compass points. In practice one side is con- 
veniently assumed to be north, which is just 
as good in the eyes of the gods, who are sub- 
limely superior to such mere matters of fact. 



50 OCCULT JAPAN. 

For fuel, pine wood is the proper article. 
Sticks free from knots are preferred, for 
resin lurks in the knots and has a spirit hard 
to quell. So long as a man is truly good he 
does not care. But the least admixture of 
sin in his soul causes him to mind these 
knotty spots acutely. 

Pine is still used in the country and in 
town when the authorities are not aware of 
the fact. Legally, however, charcoal is en- 
joined instead, owing to the danger of con- 
flagration from flying wood-ashes ; and at the 
high-priest's functions the law is dutifully 
observed. 

To give life to the drama, I will set the 
scene of it where I first saw it, in the 
grounds of the head temple of the Shinshiu 
sect, in Kanda, the heart of Tokyo. The 
crowd had already collected by the time we 
arrived ; the bed had been laid and fired, and 
the whole temple company, with the excep- 
tion of the high-priest himself, were at the 
moment busied about the pyre, some fan- 
ning the flames assiduously with open fans 
strapped to the end of long poles, while 
others pounded the coals flat again with 
staves. All were robed in white and were 



MIRACLES. 51 

barefooted. The thing made a fine pageant, 
framed by the eager faces of the multitude, 
and set in the cool, clear light of a Septem- 
ber afternoon. 

When they judged the bed to have been 
sufficiently made, they began upon the in- 
vitation to the god to descend into it. A 
good old soul full of devoutness and dignity 
led off. Proceeding solemnly to the north- 
ern end of the glowing charcoal, he faced 
the bed, clapped his hands, bowed his head 
in prayer, and then with energetic finger- 
twistings cabalistically sealed the same. 
Then he started slowly to circumambulate 
the pyre, stopping at the middle of each side 
to repeat his act. 

When he was well under way, another 
followed in repetition ; then a third and a 
fourth, and so on down to the youngest, a 
youth of ecstatic eye, who threw himself 
body and soul into the rite. Seven of them 
in all were thus strung out in line walking 
round about the pyre and sealing it digitally 
in purification. As it was not incumbent on 
the exorcists, once started, to travel at the 
same rate, the march soon took on the look 
of a holy go-as-you-please race. 



52 OCCULT JAPAN. 

The bed was circuited interminably, be- 
yond the possibility of count, so riveting to 
one's attention was the pantomime. At the 
conclusion of the dedicatory prayer the salt 
made its appearance. For, damaging as the 
statement may sound, every Shintd miracle 
has to be taken with a great many grains of 
it. In this instance the salt was used un- 
stintedly. A large bowl filled with it stood 
handily on one corner of the temple veranda, 
and each priest, as he came up, helped him- 
self to a fistful, and then proceeded to sow it 
upon the coals, finger-twisting with the free 
hand as he did so. The sowing was done 
with some vehemence, each throw being 
pointed by a violent grunt that so suited the 
fury of the action it sounded ominously like 
an imprecation. But it was only an em- 
phatic command to the evil spirits to avaunt. 

After considerable salt had thus been sown 
from the cardinal points, the head of the 
company struck sparks from a flint and steel 
in the same oriented way over the bed, the 
others still throwing on salt promiscuously 
for general efficacy. In addition to what 
was thus scattered over the coals, a mat at 
either end of the bed was spread with salt. 



MIRACLES. 53 

During all this time the high-priest, who 
took no active part in the rite himself, 
being busied with his duties as host, was 
nevertheless engaged upon a private fur- 
therance of the affair, quite obliviously, he 
told me afterward. It consisted in breath- 
ing modulately in and out of his pursed-up 
lips. This action is a great purifier ; as we 
shall see later. It is only to the godless that 
it suggests an inexpert whistler vainly at- 
tempting a favorite tune. 

A pause in the rite now informed every- 
body that the god had come, and everybody 
watched intently for what was to follow; 
with mixed emotion, I fancy, for the enter- 
tainment partook of the characters of a 
mass, a martyrdom, and a melodrama all in 
one. 

The original old gentleman once more led 
off. Taking post at the bed's northern end, 
he piously clapped his hands, muttered a few 
consecrated words, and then salting his soles 
by a rub on the mat, stepped boldly on to 
the burning bed and strode with dignified 
unconcern the whole length of it. He did 
this without the least symptom of discomfort 
or even of notice of his own act. 



54 OCCULT JAPAN. 

In their order the others followed, each 
crossing with as much indifference as if the 
bed were mother-earth. When all had gone 
over, all went over again. 

It was now the turn of the laymen. The 
passing of the priests had been a pageant, 
dignified and slow ; the procession of the 
common folk was its burlesque. The priests 
had seemed superior to the situation ; their 
lay brethren often fell ludicrously below it. 

Any one who would was invited to try his 
foot at it ; not, I may add, in the spirit of 
somewhat similar secular invitation at the 
circus. No deception whatever lay hidden 
behind the permit. For the pure are sure to 
cross in safety, and to him who crosses with 
impunity, substantial benefits accrue. 

Many bystanders availed themselves of the 
privilege. Indeed, not a few had come there 
for the purpose. Some did so on the pious 
understanding that the fire could not longer 
burn ; others apparently upon a more skep- 
tical footing. One firm believer incurred no 
little odium for the extreme character of his 
convictions. So persuaded was he of the 
now harmless state of the charcoal that he 
sauntered solemnly across, rapt in revery, 



MIRACLES. 55 

quite oblivious to a string of less devout 
folk whom his want of feeling kept in mid- 
bed on tenterhooks behind him. In the ex- 
tremity of their woe they began hopping 
undignifiedly up and down, and finally in 
their desperation pushed him off at the last, 
to his very near capsizing. For in spirit he 
was somewhere else, utterly unsuspicious of 
a sudden irreligious shove from behind. 

Another individual found it hotter than he 
had hoped, and, after taking one step stolidly 
enough, lost all sense of self-respect at the 
second, and began skipping from foot to foot 
in vain attempts at amelioration, to the de- 
rision of the lookers-on, especially of such as 
did not dare venture themselves. Appar- 
ently, he thought better of it a little later, 
or perhaps he found himself more scared 
than scarred. For soon after I noticed that 
he had adventured himself again, and this 
time, to his credit, with becoming majesty 
of march. 

Indeed, the procession was as humorous 
as humanity. All sorts and conditions of 
men, women, and children went over first and 
last. All were gain to religion, for nothing 
showed more conspicuous than the buoyant 



56 OCCULT JAPAN. 

power of faith. It was not the sole, but the 
self that trod there, stripped of social cover- 
ing. In the heat of the moment the walkers 
forgot their fellow-men and walked alone 
with their god. Characters came out vividly 
in the process, like hidden writing before the 
fire. Each contrasted oddly with its neigh- 
bors, often treading close on its opposite's 
heels, jostling emotion itself by the juxta- 
position. Now a sturdy jinrikisha man, per- 
suaded that the crossing would bring him 
fares, went over as a matter of business, and 
in his wake a small boy, unable to resist so 
divine a variety of tittle-ties on thin ice, fol- 
lowed for doubtless a very different reason. 
Then a family in due order of etiquette ven- 
tured successfully along in a line. Now a 
dear old grandam, bent by years to a ques- 
tion mark of life, hobbled bravely across 
notwithstanding; and now a fair little girl, 
straight and slim as an admiration point, per- 
formed the feat vicariously, but I doubt not 
as effectively, in the arms of one of the 
priests. A touch of the fine in all this 
that tended to film the eyes, and lend the 
scene a glamour which, if not strictly re- 
ligious, was its very close of kin. 



MIRACLES. 57 

Many of the lay-folk, not content with one 
crossing, returned for more ; the church 
kindly permitting any number of repetitions. 
Indeed, the performance was exceedingly 
popular. 

When the last enthusiast had had enough, 
the embers were prodded by the poles into 
pi. This airing of his bed causes the god not 
unnaturally to depart. After he has gone 
no one may cross unscathed ; and no one 
attempted to do so. Under coals are cer- 
tainly more fiery than surface ones, espe- 
cially if the latter have been well sprinkled 
with salt. 

A final prayer pointed with finger-pan- 
tomime closed the function. 

The use of the salt deserves further men- 
tion. In this instance it was a salient fea- 
ture of the rite, and had been enjoined by 
no less a personage, it appeared, than the 
god himself. But as the deity had com- 
manded it under the somewhat poetic title 
of " Flower of the Waves," the high-priest 
had been at first at a loss, so he said, to 
comprehend the divine meaning. Later the 
god had condescended to an explanation. 
Nevertheless, this flowery title, so I am 



58 OCCULT JAPAN. 

given to understand, is in common secular 
use. 

To the undevout mind the salting of the 
bed would seem to conduce to the success 
of the feat. For salt is a very glutton of 
heat, and will do pretty much anything to 
get it, however menial, from melting snow 
on horse-car tracks to freezing ice-cream. 
Cooling coals is therefore quite in character 
for it. This, its unappeasable appetite for 
caloric is not unknown to the profession. 
The priests nobly admitted that the salt 
mitigated the full rigor of the miracle. 

The miracle does not, however, depend 
for performance upon its use ; only one has 
to be holier to work the miracle without it. 
At times fire-walking is done quite fresh ; 
preferably amid the purity of the hills, with 
whose freshness its own is then in keep- 
ing. But it is occasionally so performed in 
town. 

The origin of the rite mounts back to 
extreme antiquity. It dates from before there 
were men to walk, having been instituted of 
the gods in the days when they alone lived 
in the land. Walking, indeed, is not of 
its essence ; peripatetic proof being but a 



MIRACLES. 59 

special mode of showing one's immunity to 
fire. The possibility of such immunity was 
first demonstrated by a lady, the goddess 
who rejoices in the simple but somewhat 
protracted name of Ko-no-hana-saka-ya-hime- 
no-mikoto. It sounds better when trans- 
lated : the Goddess who makes the Flower- 
buds to open. She is perhaps better known 
as the Goddess of Fuji. She invented the 
miracle in order to persuade her doubting 
spouse, the god Ninigi-no-mikoto, of the 
falsehood of certain suspicions which he had 
been ungallant enough to entertain about 
her. She built herself a house against her 
confinement, and then, after the babe was 
born, burnt it to the ground over her head, 
without so much as scorching herself or the 
baby. This of course reassured Ninigi-no- 
mikoto, and is chiefly noteworthy as an in- 
stance of a miracle converting a god himself. 
Those who care to read all the evidence in 
the case will find it in the Nihonshoki, 
an invaluable work in fifteen volumes of 
archaic Japanese. 

Walking over the coals with impunity is 
attributable only in part to virtue in the per- 
former. Immunity from harm is chiefly due 



60 OCCULT JAPAN. 

to the fact that the fire has lost its power to 
burn. It has parted with its spirit. Materially 
considered, the fire is still there, but spirit- 
ually speaking it is extinct. This is why, 
when it has been once exorcised, the veriest 
tyro may cross it without a blister. The 
spirit of water has descended to it from the 
moon and driven the spirit of fire out of the 
coals. Any skeptic might soon prove this 
to bis own satisfaction by just walking over 
the coals himself, were true piety compatible 
with doubt. 

" The object of the rite," so the high- 
priest expounded it to me, " is that the pop- 
ulace may see that the god when duly be- 
sought can take away the burning spirit of 
fire while permitting the body of it to 
remain. For so can he do with the hearts of 
men ; the bad spirit may be driven out and 
the good put in its place while still the man 
continues to exist." 

To the coldly critical eye of science two 
things conduce to the performance of this 
feat. One is the toughness of the far east- 
ern sole. The far Oriental inherits a much 
less sensitive nervous organization than is 
the birthright of a European, and his cuticle 



MIRACLES. 6 1 

is further calloused to something not unlike 
leather by constant exposed use. This 
leaves the distance to be traversed between 
the natural sensitiveness and the induced in- 
sensitiveness considerably less than it would 
be with us. The intervening step is the 
result of exaltation. By first firmly believ- 
ing that no pain will be felt and then in- 
ducing a state of ecstasy whose preoccupa- 
tion the afferent sensation fails to pierce, no 
pain is perceived. 

More than this, the burn is probably not 
followed by the same after-effects. For 
there is a more or less complete absence of 
blisters. The part burnt is burnt like cloth, 
and that is the end of it. No inconvenience 
whatever follows the act among the truly 
good. In less devout folk small blisters are 
raised, but without noticeable annoyance. 
The fact is that in burns generally it is the 
cure that constitutes the complaint. It is 
the body's feverish anxiety to repair the 
damage that causes all the trouble. Even in 
the severest burns very little of us is ever 
burnt up, but our own alarm that it may 
be induces our consequent inflammation. 
Delbceuf showed this conclusively upon one 
of his hypnotized patients. 



62 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Faith, therefore, does in very truth work 
the miracle. We know this now that mir- 
acles have ceased to be miraculous ; which 
is perhaps a little late for purely pious pur- 
poses. 

IV. 

We now come to the third miracle of the 
three ; the Tsicrugi-watari, or the Climbing 
the Ladder of Sword-blades. 

Among the incredible feats that we are 
asked to believe of Indian jugglers, not the 
least astounding is their reputed power of 
treading and even of lying with impunity 
upon sword-blades ; an ability which some 
of us are inclined to credit to the verb in 
its other sense. Nevertheless, the same 
startling if unnecessary bit of acrobatism 
may be seen every spring in Tokyo quite 
secularly done among the peep-shows about 
Asakusa. To such, however, as still remain 
skeptical on the subject, it may prove con- 
vincing to learn that the thing is a miracle, 
one of the great miracles of the Shintd 
church. 

It dates from a dateless antiquity. In 
the Nihonshoki mention is made of it older 
than Jimmu Tenno himself, the first human 



MIRACLES. 63 

Emperor of Japan. Its first instance seems 
to have been a case of necessity. When the 
two gods, Futsu*nushi-no-kami and Take- 
mika-tsuchi-no-kami were sent from heaven 
to request O-ana-muchi-no-kami to resign the 
Japanese throne, we are told that on coming 
into his presence they imposingly planted 
their swords hilt downwards in the ground, 
and then, arms akimbo, seated themselves 
stolidly upon the points. Unlike the bash- 
ful individual who sat down upon the spur 
of the moment only to rise hastily again, 
their seats seemed to have proved quite 
comfortable, for they delivered a long and 
somewhat tedious harangue in that not in- 
effective attitude. 

This style of camp-stool had, however, gone 
out of fashion when I made the acquaint- 
ance of the miracle last September ; the mod- 
ern mode of doing the thing being to set the 
blades edge up and then walk over them. 
The walking was about to be performed, so 
rumor said, at Hachioji, which it appeared 
was one of the habitats of the miracle. For 
shrines have their pet miracles as they have 
their patron gods. Upon investigation ru- 
mor turned out to be correct in all but date, 



64 OCCULT JAPAN. 

the walking having unfortunately taken place 
the previous April, at the annual festival 
of the shrine of which it was the specialty, 
and would not be repeated until the April 
following. Seven months seeming long to 
wait even for a miracle, I ventured to suggest 
to the priests a private performance. They 
instantly expressed themselves as very will- 
ing to give it, stipulating merely for a week's 
prior mortification of the flesh. Such indul- 
gence being a necessity to any Shinto mir- 
acle, the date fixed on for the spectacle was 
set duly ahead, and some ten days later, on a 
veritable May morning in early October, we 
left Tokyo for Hachioji by the morning train 
to witness it. 

There were five of us, including two globe- 
trotting friends of mine, who, having seen 
one miracle, had developed a strong amateur 
interest in religion, and Asa, my "boy." 

From Hachioji we were bowled in jinri- 
kisha some four miles out of the town to a 
small temple known as Hachiman Jinja, 
situate on the outskirts of the hamlet of 
Moto-Hachioji. The temple buildings, well 
parasoled by ancient trees, stood upon a 
spur overlooking the little valley where the 



MIRACLES. 65 

grass-grown roofs of the village peeped 
domestically from amid the crops. An army 
of mulberry bushes in very orderly files 
flanked them round about, silk-worm rearing 
being the village occupation ; so much so 
that it had given its name to the local pil- 
grim-club under whose auspices the function 
was to be performed. 

Two gods shared the temple very cor- 
dially ; O-ana-muchi-no-kami, the right-hand 
god of the Ontake trio, and Hachiman Daijin, 
the god of war. O-ana-muchi-no-kami was 
the patron god of the feat we had come to 
see. He himself was wont not only to walk 
upon the blades, but at times went so far as 
actually to go to sleep upon them, a seem- 
ingly useless bit of bravado only paralleled 
by the pains some people are at to tell you 
how they doze in their dentist's chair. 

From the head priest's house we made our 
way up a hill to the temple. As we turned 
the corner of the outer buildings we caught 
sight, at the farther end of the grounds, 
of so startling a scaffold that we all instinc- 
tively came to a point — of admiration — 
before it. Evidently this was the material 
means to the miracle, for against it a ladder, 



66 OCCULT JAPAN. 

with notches suggestively vacant of rungs, 
led up to a frail plank platform raised aston- 
ishingly high into the air. We had somehow 
assumed that the sword-walking took place 
on the flat, and not, as it appeared it was to 
be done, skyward. 

When we had sufficiently recovered from 
our first surprise to examine this startling 
structure, we found it to consist of four stout 
poles, planted securely in the earth, and 
braced by cross-ties, holding two thirds way 
up the above-mentioned platform, upon which 
stood a shrine. The height of this upper 
story above the ground proved to be thirteen 
feet. Upon a secular ladder at the side some 
priests were giving a few finishing touches 
to the work. 

Inclosing the scaffold stood four fronded 
bamboo, one at each corner of a square, con- 
nected eight feet up by a straw rope, with 
sixteen gohei, four on a side, pendent from 
it. This poetic palisade kept out the evil 
spirits ; a bamboo railing below kept out 
small boys. 

Upon the shrine above, which was simply 
a deal table, stood, dignifiedly straight, and 
commandingly lined in a row, three gohei 



MIRACLES. 67 

upon their wands. In front of them, upon a 
lower table, stood five others, colored respec- 
tively, yellow, red, black, white, and blue, the 
five far eastern elemental colors. The upper 
row represented the gods of construction, 
placed here to keep an eye on the scaffold- 
ing ; the lower, the gods of the earth. Flank- 
ing the gohei stood two branches of sakaki, 
the sacred tree of Shinto, draped with lace- 
like filaments of gohei. At the corners of 
the platform four tufted bamboo, joined by a 
straw-rope hung with gohei, made a second 
palisade, miniature of the one below ; while 
from a pole at the back floated a banner in- 
scribed : Heavenly Gods, Earthly Gods. 

Half way up the scaffold two paper pla- 
cards, one on either side the ladder, challenged 
the eye. The right-hand one gave the func- 
tions and functionaries of the festival : the 
Principal Purifier, the Vice-Purifier, the Chief 
of Offerings, the Purifying Door, and the 
God-Arts ; the offices preceded, the names of 
the persons followed. The other specified 
the various functions of the God-Arts them- 
selves, and the names of those who bore 
them, a certain Mr. Konichi being down as 
Drawing the Bow. This, it seemed, was to 



68 OCCULT JAPAN. 

be taken in a purely ceremonial sense, the 
real archer being Mr. Kobayashi. 

For his benefit, four short posts about four 
feet high had been planted directly under the 
platform, ready to receive two swords, on 
the blades of which he was to stand while 
engaged in his act. We could not help won- 
dering how he was to get upon them. In- 
deed, the elevating nature of the whole per- 
formance was not the least impressive part 
of it. The reason for this lay, we were told, 
in the intrinsic purity of high places, because 
above the ordinary level of mankind. Cer- 
tainly, with a ladder of sword-blades for sole 
means of approach, the platform above did 
not seem likely to prove overcrowded. 

On the left stood the Kagura-do or dan- 
cing-stage, filled with musicians, who were at 
the moment engaged in tuning up — not a 
highly melodious performance at best. They 
kindly desisted to let us lunch upon the 
stage, which we did while the other prepara- 
tions went on, to the open-mouthed enjoy- 
ment of many small villagers, who had already 
begun to collect for the occasion. As soon 
as lunch was over the swords were brought 
out. They had not been lashed in place 



MIRACLES. 69 

before, in order that we might first inspect 
them. This we now did to our satisfaction. 
They were, one and all, old samurai blades, 
as sharp as one would care to handle — from 
the hilt — and much sharper than he would 
care to handle in any less legitimate manner. 
They certainly did not seem adapted to tread- 
ing on, even tentatively. There were twelve 
of them, all loans from the neighborhood, 
and heirlooms, every one, from knightly 
times — not so great an antiquity as it 
sounds, since the middle ages were but 
twenty years ago. But I should never have 
imagined so many retired knights or their 
heirs in so very retired a hamlet. The blades 
themselves bore evidence, however, of hav- 
ing been possessed and probably used for 
quite an indefinite time by their owners ; and 
this touch of local domesticity imparted a 
certain sincerity to the act artistically con- 
vincing in itself. 

The swords were then lashed in place. 
But as the divine archery was to precede 
the divine climb, and there were twelve sets 
of notches in the ladder and but twelve 
blades in all, those destined for its two lower 
rungs were lashed first upon the shooting- 



JO OCCULT JAPAN. 

stand. The ladder measured fifteen feet in 
length, the rungs being about a Japanese 
foot, fifteen inches of our feet, apart ; doubt- 
less such distance being found in practice 
the most comfortable. After securely tying 
on the swords, blades up, the priests de- 
parted to dress for the function. 

Meanwhile a capital pantomime was in 
progress upon the dancing-stage. A dance- 
hall is an invariable feature of every well- 
appointed Shinto temple, and is put in play 
on every possible occasion. The performers 
are sometimes girls, sometimes men, the 
former doing the serious dancing and the 
latter the jocose mimes. Both are always 
capital, and on this occasion I think the 
show outdid itself. Certainly it proved 
comic enough to keep the religious in roars. 
Three buffoons in fine pudding-faced masks 
engaged in turn in an altercation with an 
impressive gray-beard. The altercation was 
of an intermittent character owing to the 
necessity felt by the pudding-faced citizen 
of taking the audience into his confidence 
by elaborate asides of side-splitting simpli- 
city, digressions which in no wise prevented 
the row's proper emotional increase, till at 



MIRACLES. 71 

last it culminated in a fight which the gray- 
beard, who did nothing but stalk round with 
a fine woodeny walk, invariably won. This 
was due quite simply to his god-like great- 
ness, and not to the fact that his adversary 
went through the fight with his scabbard in 
lieu of his sword, having with elaborate in- 
advertence drawn the one for the other, a 
mistake at which he was subsequently pro- 
portionately surprised. All this, of course, 
detracted not a whit from the sanctity of 
the performance, which, like that of orato- 
rios, came in with the historical characters 
the performers were supposed to represent. 

In the mean time the countryside had 
been silently gathering. The ubiquitous 
little girl with the pick-a-back baby appeared 
first. Her familiars followed ; the waifs 
growing in stature as they grew in numbers. 
I did not see them come ; I only saw them 
there. And they made as modest a setting 
to the miracle as do the mountings to a 
Japanese painting. There was about them, 
indeed, a little of the ecstatic stupor of the 
cow, but the usual bovine stare of modern 
Japanese curiosity was here tempered by 
instinctive old-fashioned politeness. 



*]2 OCCULT JAPAN. 

A Japanese street-crowd pleasingly lacks 
that brutality which distinguishes a western 
one ; on the other hand, it has a stare of 
its own, an unobstrusively obstrusive stare, 
which knows no outlawing limit of age, and 
has a vacancy in it that almost bars offense. 
Apparently it is never outgrown. It alone 
would convict the race of a lack of self-con- 
sciousness and very nearly of a lack of any 
consciousness whatsoever. I love the Japan- 
ese urchin for all that, whether staring or 
not, but to me advanced age in the starer 
stales the infinite unvariety of his act. Or- 
derly, however, and good-natured, a Japanese 
crowd is past praise, and one would think 
past policemen, which is not, I suppose, why 
the latter always turn up at such seasons. 
Here, however, I was much pleased to note 
their conspicuous absence. And still the 
concourse grew. When I first counted the 
folk they numbered one hundred and fifty. 
Shortly after, as near as I could estimate, 
there were two hundred and fifty people on 
the spot, of all ages, sizes, and conditions. 
The whole countryside had turned out, with 
or without the baby, according as it existed 
or not. Nobody's occupation seemed to in- 



MIRACLES. 73 

terfere with his presence there in the least, 
from the village ragamuffin to the village 
belle. Charming girls I noticed in the act 
of commenting upon us, I trust favorably ; 
for, as one of my friends puts it about his 
books, I would rather please the young girls 
than the old men. 

But though we had not reckoned with- 
out our host, we had reckoned, it soon turned 
out, without our uninvited guest — the in- 
evitable policeman. Just as we had taken 
chairs on the oratory platform, and had for- 
gotten his existence, he turned up. He did 
so inopportunely for himself, for the first 
prayer had begun, and he had perforce to 
wait till it was over to put his official ques- 
tions. The prayer was the first of the puri- 
fication rites, and was offered before an im- 
provised altar on the oratory. The altar was 
set out as the customary divine dinner-table 
and displayed the usual choice collection of 
indigestibles ; fortunately always to be taken 
in a strictly immaterial manner. For every 
Shinto service is nothing but a divine din- 
ner-party, with the god for sole guest. In 
this case the aboriginal banquet was offered 
to the gohei of O-ana-muchi-no-mikoto, the 
patron god of the occasion. 



74 OCCULT JAPAN. 

The adjournment made the policeman's 
opportunity. Stiffly lifting his hat, as if the 
action were itself part of bureaucratic au- 
tomatism, he challenged a lay brother on the 
oratory steps and proceeded to interview 
him on the cause of the crowd. Apparently 
the lay brother worsted him, for at the end 
of the colloquy he was so far humbled as 
simply to send me his card, with the modest 
request to know if I were a noble, as in that 
case he wished to salute me properly ; to 
which I returned mine with the reply that 
I was not a noble, but an American, and 
therefore only the sixty-millionth part of 
a sovereign, and left him to figure out the 
respect due in so complicated a case. 

The occasion, however, soon had a human- 
izing effect even upon his officialdom, so 
that he shortly grew quite tame and ac- 
cepted at the hands of the lay brother a seat 
upon the platform beside us. 

Meanwhile the priests were busy with 
prayers and finger-charms on the mats at 
the foot of the ladder, and when enough of 
them had been restored there took place a 
solemn walk-round by the whole company 
about the staging. 



MIRACLES. 75 

Mr. Konichi, the Sacred Bow, and 
Mr. Kobayashi, the Chief of God-Arts, then 
armed themselves with two beautiful bows 
beribboned at the end with a tangle of col- 
ored gohei of the five elemental colors, and 
proceeded, the one to mount by the secular 
ladder, which had not yet been removed, to 
the altar above, where he went through much 
pantomimic archery ; the other to do like 
effigy-shooting below. The Chief of the 
God-Arts was specially effective. Stretching 
his bow at each corner of the square in turn, 
he made semblance to shoot at the demons, 
and accentuated his performance by quite 
unearthly grimaces. He knotted first his 
fingers and then his face in a truly startling 
manner. Nature had endowed him with a 
remarkably expressive physiognomy, which 
even in repose bordered perilously upon 
caricature. When this came to be further 
heightened by art, as enthusiastic perform- 
ance of the rite demanded, the effect was 
extreme, quite capable of driving off devils, 
which was its object, and very nearly of driv- 
ing off the bystanders, which was not. The 
pious saw in it the most realistic piety. 
What the children saw I will not pretend to 



y6 OCCULT JAPAN. 

guess, but I can conceive the nightmares 
they may have had in consequence. 

When he had thus successfully frightened 
off the evil spirits without, he entered 
within the staging, and before the arrow- 
stand further scared the imps. As the exor- 
cism drew to an end and we began once more 
to wonder how he was going to mount his 
hobby-horse, the big drum was brought by 
somebody and set up beside the stand. This 
solved the enigma and enabled the Chief of 
God-Arts, with the help of a pole, to rise 
carefully to the ends of the posts and to 
place first one foot and then the other 
lengthwise upon the blades, the forward 
edges coming out between his great and 
second toes. He then discarded the pole, as 
I have seen more secular performers do, to 
the catch of an assistant, and stood poised 
upon the knife-edges. Not content with 
standing upon them, he must needs tilt 
himself up and down as one does in 
testing the breaking power of a plank. 
This, of course, merely showed how much at 
home he felt upon the blades. Then with 
due deliberation he fitted an arrow into its 
notch, raised the bow, and drew it to his 



MIRACLES. 77 

shoulder. In this effective pose he re- 
mained a long time, uttering what sounded 
uncommonly like an oath, but was in fact a 
song, sister to this : — 

" The God of the Bow bends down from on high, 
And at twang of the string, lo ! the demons fly." 

The string, however, did not twang. For 
the exorcism continued, and the bow stayed 
bent. Indeed, the one was as long drawn 
out as the other, and the suspense was be- 
coming positively painful, when at last he 
released the arrow into the air. The de- 
mons had evidently taken the hint, for the 
arrow buried itself harmlessly in the bushes. 

With the assistance of the pole he then 
changed his pose a quarter way round, plant- 
ing first one foot and then the other care- 
fully across both blades. Then discarding the 
pole, he again went through the same pan- 
tomime as before, ending in a second release. 
His pose at this point was quite magnificent, 
and his intentness such that as with his eye 
he followed the arrow's flight, his whole 
audience instinctively did the same. We 
failed to see the shaft strike, and, turning 
back, behold ! there it was still in his hand. 



7 8 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Whether economy or the remains of original 
sin prompted this pious fraud, I know not, 
but he thus deceived us more than once, as 
he turned round quarter-wise upon his holy 
pedestal. Once he hit a tree, quite by acci- 
dent, and the crowd applauded. After he 
had thus revolved several times, he called 
again for the pole and carefully descended 
from his pinnacle. I examined his soles and 
found them not only uncut, but barely lined ; 
an unhurt condition which he shortly pro- 
ceeded to demonstrate practically upon the 
ladder. 

The divine shooting was no sooner over 
than the purification rites for the climbing 
of the ladder began ; the usual thread of 
prayer knotted with finger-twists being 
gone through with upon the mats in front. 
Then, that there might be no mistake in the 
minds of the populace as to the genuine- 
ness of the miracle, the Chief of God-Arts as- 
cended the secular ladder, which still leaned 
against the platform, and producing sheets of 
paper from his sleeve, cut them elaborately 
into little bits upon each blade in succession, 
and let the pieces flutter to the ground. 
When he had finished the secular ladder 
was removed. 



MIRACLES. 79 

Nothing now led up to the goal of this 
acrobatic pilgrimage but the consecrated 
ladder of sword-blades. Ad astra per aspera 
with a vengeance. Nevertheless the Chief 
of God-Arts, calling once more upon the 
gods, prepared to mount. Girding up his 
loins that his feet might not catch in his 
tunic, and grasping parts of the upper blades 
with his hands, he planted one foot length- 
wise along the lowest sword-edge, and then, 
drawing himself up to its level, placed the 
other similarly on the blade above. Then 
he rose in like manner to the third rung, and 
the fourth, and so on heavenward. He did 
this carefully but deliberately. Evidently 
it was merely a question of foot-placing with 
him. 

The higher he got the less he seemed to 
think of his footing and the more of effect, 
till in mid-ascent he was minded to try a 
religious pas seuL Posing on one foot, he 
turned deftly to face the crowd, and with 
the appropriate swing kicked out with the 
other high into the air, flaunting his foot 
before the rapt concourse of people in the 
most approved prima assoluta manner. At 
this unexpected terpsichorean touch the 



80 OCCULT JAPAN. 

populace burst into applause ; and the Chief 
of God-Arts, turning triumphantly to his 
climb, continued boldly up till amid a gen- 
eral gasp of relief from the crowd below he 
topped the last rung and stepped out un- 
scathed upon the platform. 

Instantly he sank in prayer before the 
shrine. While he was at his devotions the 
second or secular ladder was brought round 
to another side of the scaffolding and tilted 
up against it, for what purpose did not at first 
appear. For, his prayer finished, the Chief 
of God-Arts turned again to the ladder of 
swords and exorcised it afresh. Then just 
as he was about to set foot on it for the 
descent, as we thought, he turned back and 
to our astonishment came quietly down the 
secular ladder instead. I was unavoidably 
reminded of the devout but inconsequent 
lady who told a friend that " She thought 
she should go to New York on Wednesday, 
D. V.," but, reflecting a moment, "that she 
should come back on Saturday anyway." 

That his taking to the back-stairs for the 
descent was not due, however, to any in- 
ability on his part to come down by the 
front ones was shortly evident by his mak- 



MIRACLES. 8 1 

ing soon after the ascent of the sword-blades 
nonchalantly a second time. The truth was, 
the miracle was supposed to end at the top, 
and the secular ladder to be as invisible a 
return to the original position as back-stairs 
generally. 

As the Chief of God-Arts came down thus 
incognito by the back way, a second priest 
made ready to go up by the front one. His 
performance was largely a repetition of the 
first's ; except that before starting the others 
weighted him with some boxes full of charms, 
which they strapped upon his back, to be 
consecrated by the ascent for subsequent dis- 
tribution. What he carried made apparently 
no difference to him. He stepped up boldly 
and, after due suspense on the part of the 
populace, stepped out safely at the top. 

The next to ascend was the head priest 
himself. This was a special compliment to 
us, since the head priest no longer habitu- 
ally climbs, being well on in years. He 
got up, however, with impunity, save for a 
slight cut upon one palm. The third blade 
from the top did the business. We had no- 
ticed that the others had shied at it as if it 
were very thin ice, and when it came to 



82 OCCULT JAPAN. 

the older skin of the head priest, he simply 
went through. This mishap conclusively- 
showed, the priests stated, that for some cause 
the blade was impure. They were after- 
wards able to prove their prognostication 
quite right, for on subsequent investigation 
the blade was found to have recently killed a 
dog and not to have been properly purified 
since. 

After the head priest all the others went 
up in turn, including the lay-brother ; some 
of them several times. Planting the feet 
lengthwise was the favorite mode of pro- 
cedure, but when more convenient the foot 
was put across the blade instead. To one 
man in particular it seemed to make small 
difference how he trod. He jumped jauntily 
up as if the blades were an every-day set 
of rungs and he in a hurry. 

Inasmuch as imitation is the sincerest 
flattery, the priests should have been greatly 
pleased when at this point Asa, my house- 
boy, fired to emulation, suddenly pulled off 
his European boots and socks, rolled up his 
European trousers, and presented himself as 
candidate for the climb. To my eye the 
outlandishness of his dress, amid the archaic 



MIRACLES. 83 

costume of the priests, gave him at once 
that unsuitable appearance to the deed so 
consecrated to the supposed countryman 
who volunteers at the circus. I should cer- 
tainly have had my doubts about the gen- 
uineness of his inexperience had I not known 
him for my own "boy." The priests, how- 
ever, received him most kindly, and after 
sprinkling him with a shower of sparks and 
properly finger-twisting over him, to purify 
him as much as possible, — and I doubt not 
he needed it, — showed him how to plant his 
feet on the rungs and started him up the 
ladder. To my surprise, and I think his 
own, he went as well as the best of them. 
We watched him with some vanity and more 
concern, and were suddenly electrified when, 
half way to the top, he turned, and, with a 
triumphant smile, made, he too, the approved 
corypJi^e kick high into the air. It brought 
down the house but not the boy, who con- 
tinued on successfully till at last he stepped 
out triumphantly at the top. He was obliged 
to abbreviate the prayer, from not knowing 
it, and then he too came down the regulation 
back-stairs. 

Exactly what happened after this is a mys- 



84 OCCULT JAPAN. 

tery. Whether in his exaltation and hurry 
to get back to his place he forgot the pro- 
jecting tips of the sword-blades, or whether 
in coming round the corner he collided with 
one of the priests, was not clear, for the first 
thing we knew, the boy was on the ground 
bleeding pretty freely from a gash in the top 
of his foot, while the priests did their best to 
stanch the blood. The point of one of the 
swords had ripped him as he passed. Never- 
theless, he shortly after hobbled to the ora- 
tory veranda and then, while a proper bandage 
was being fetched, promptly fainted. When 
duly swathed he was dispatched to the head 
priest's house, where he underwent consider- 
able exorcism, which, as he informed me later, 
did him, a world of good. Evidently he pos- 
sessed more latent piety than I had given 
him credit for. 

How many more enthusiasts might have 
gone up the divine ladder had it not been for 
this regrettable diversion will never be 
known. For by tacit consent the episode 
closed the performance. 

It by no means, however, ended the fes- 
tivity. Several pleasing adjuncts to this had 
miraculously appeared, unperceived, during 



MIRACLES. 85 

the performance of the miracle itself. A 
long line of booth - mats had suddenly 
sprouted mushroom-like out of the ground 
beyond the oratory and was now attempt- 
ing to beguile the crowd by every species of 
toy and gimcrack, visibly connected or un- 
connected with the occasion. There were 
paper masks and clay foxes and baby bows 
and arrows and papier-mache swords. The 
last caught our fancy, as being suited for 
presentation to some of the urchins who 
were standing interestedly about, and who 
instantly put them to proper use by making 
us the objects of pantomimic attack as soon 
as ever our backs were turned. 

Through this running fire we made our 
way safely to the head priest's house, from 
which, loaded with charms consecrated by 
the miracle, we were bundled into our jinri- 
kisha and trundled regretfully toward home. 
And now to explain the miracle : — 
Doubtless credulity is the mother of mir- 
acles, but doubtless, also, with the far eastern 
family of them a pachydermatous sole step- 
fathers the process. For most of them are 
questions of cuticle. Of the three great 
Shinto rites : the Ordeal by Boiling Water ; 



86 OCCULT JAPAN. 

the Walking across Live Coals ; and the 
Climbing upon Sword-blades, all depend upon 
it for easy performance. That the average 
Japanese sole is equal to the feat without 
preliminary purification is evident from the 
success of my boy, who simply picked up his 
skirts and walked. 

But a certain other physical fact enters 
this last miracle not commonly appreciated, 
to the innocent manipulation of which by 
the priests the miracle is due ; to wit, the 
immense difference in cutting power between 
a stationary and a moving blade. Everybody 
is aware that there is a difference, but few 
people realize how very great it is. If you 
press your finger upon the sharp edge of 
your knife, you will be surprised to find what 
a pressure you can put upon it with impu- 
nity ; but if, ever so gently, you draw the 
knife -blade across the skin, it instantly 
sinks in. 

The principle involved is the principle of 
the wedge. By drawing the blade along in 
the direction of its edge at the same time 
that you press down, you thin its angle to 
any desired tenuity. You have but to grad- 
uate the horizontal motion to the vertical 



MIRACLES. 87 

force. As the angle of the wedge thus 
sharpens, the force necessary to make it 
enter is lessened indefinitely. We unwit- 
tingly apply this principle whenever we cut 
anything. And as this is our normal state, 
we forget that the blade is, statically used, 
not as cutting as we think. 

Furthermore, it will be remembered that, 
as a rule, the priests took heed in placing 
their feet. Most of them were careful to 
minimize the impact. 

These are some of the points that make 
miracle-working possible ; but a good audi- 
ence is equally necessary. A sympathetic 
populace renders Japan a very paradise of 
miracles. There is thus a twofold reason 
for a miracle's success ; a thicker skin in 
the priests, and a thicker skull in the peo- 
ple. This double lack of penetration makes 
it easier both to do, and to be done by, a 
miracle than it would be elsewhere. 

Pondering in this wise upon the great 
advantages for successful miracle-working 
possessed by priests of an artistic, pachyder- 
matous people over those of a thin-skinned, 
scientific one, and half lamenting the lost 
grandeur of that pious past whose childish 



88 OCCULT JAPAN. 

imaginings loomed so large and life-like, and 
vanish so sadly before our bull's-eyes of 
search, we were rolled through the broad 
quiet twilight of tillage toward the growing 
twinkle of the town. 

V. 

To give a full account of Shint5 miracles, 
we have now to consider quite a different 
class of them ; the objective ones, pure and 
simple. The nomenclature is not mere 
matter of distinction. For the first kind 
are brought about by the unintentional but 
efficient subjective action of the miracle- 
performer himself ; the latter take place 
independently of him. It is a distinction 
unimportant as regards the things, but of 
vital consequence as regards the people. 
For though it be open to the looker-on to 
doubt whether the water or the fire in the 
two ordeals above be rendered any the less 
hot by having parted with its spirit, it is 
not open to him to doubt the difference of 
perception of that heat in the man's normal 
and abnormal states of consciousness. This 
question is quaintly begged by believers, by 
stating that the god withdraws the spirit of 



MIRACLES. 89 

the fire or permits it to return momentarily, 
according to the character of the tester. 
Skeptics settle the whole matter off-hand 
by denying the fact. But it is unscientific 
to call upon a noumenon unnecessarily, even 
of an annihilating character. Universal ne- 
gation of a sense distinction implies univer- 
sal charlatanry ; and men are both too sim- 
ple and too astute for that to be possible. 
Charlatans ape but they do not originate. 
A counterfeit implies a genuine, and a sham- 
mer something to sham. 

To the objective miracles there is no psy- 
chic or divine side ; they are due to undi- 
vined psychical principles merely. The 
Odojigokushiki, or " The Descent of the 
Thunder-God," is one of these. He de- 
scends into so plebeian a thing as a kettle 
of steaming rice, the rice being afterward of- 
fered in banquet to the temple deities. For 
to have rice taste like thunder is said to be 
peculiarly pleasing to the gods. The manner 
of working this miracle is as follows : — 

Upon a small urn was placed a kettle and 
upon the kettle a rice steamer, the lid so 
set on as to leave a slit on one side. A 
young acolyte then appeared in the usual 



90 OCCULT JAPAN. 

pilgrimage robe, his hair dank from the bath 
and his whole person shivering with cold, 
and, striking a spark from some flint and 
steel, proceeded to light the fire and then to 
encourage its combustion by the usual fin- 
ger-twisting, scattering of salt, prayer, strik- 
ing of sparks, and brandishing of the gohei- 
wand. 

After the exorcism was well under way, 
the head priest came forward and sat down 
before the kettle in order to perfect the rite, 
the acolyte falling back to the part of mute. 
In keeping with the good man's extreme 
purity, his finishing touches were very sim- 
ple. They consisted of a soundless whistle 
which he kept up through his pursed lips 
and of certain archaic finger - charms sym- 
bolic of pulling some very heavy substance 
toward him. Then, still mutely whistling, he 
sat perfectly still and watched. 

He had not long to wait. Suddenly a roar 
rose out of the body of the kettle, and at 
almost the same instant the priest's own 
body began to sway back and forth. Steam 
followed the roar ; then, after a couple of sec- 
onds, the roar ceased. We did not have to 
be told that it was the voice of the Thunder- 



MIRACLES. 91 

God ; and when it ceased we knew the god 
had gone. 

Press of business the priest gave as excuse 
for the shortness of the divine visit. But 
indeed we were very fortunate, it seemed, 
in getting him to come at all, for often 
the deity does not deign to descend, even for 
a moment, being otherwise occupied. Be- 
sides, if every accessory be not perfectly pure 
he refuses to come on conscientious grounds. 

The priest averred that at the moment of 
possession he always felt a violent punch in 
his stomach. He also said that the swaying 
of his body was to induce by symbolic trac- 
tion the presence of the god, though it had 
seemed a trifle late for the purpose. Doubt- 
less the god can be so constrained, but doubt- 
less, also, the kettle is for something in the 
subsequent conversation. The slit in its lid 
has been suggested as capable of explaining 
the miracle, could it only talk as well as it 
can roar. 

VI. 

We now come to a miracle which might 
possibly be turned to practical account. It is 
perhaps the most wonderful of the objective 
ones. It consists in bringing down fire from 



92 OCCULT JAPAN. 

heaven by simple incantation. The spark 
thus obtained may be used to light any- 
thing, the prehistoric two sticks preferably 
for purposes of warmth. At the time I was 
shown this miracle, I was not in need of 
caloric, — it was seventy-five degrees Fahren- 
heit in the shade, — so I was permitted to 
witness its working upon the comparatively 
vile body of my own freshly filled, unlighted 
pipe. 

This is a very difficult miracle. Indeed, 
even when it succeeds it is scarcely an eco- 
nomical method of firing one's tobacco day- 
dreams, so much time and trouble does it 
cost. But to epicureans who hunt new sen- 
sations and to whom the one meaning of the 
word "dear" is synonymous with the other, 
it may safely be recommended. For it is not 
likely as yet, if I may argue from my own 
experience, to be generally taken up. 

To insure success in the city, the day 
should be sunshiny. Among the mountains 
even a cloudy day will do, so I am informed. 
I cannot speak confidently on this latter point, 
because my own investigations were confined 
to the ridge-pole of my house in town, and to 
the turf immediately below it. 



MIRACLES. 93 

The priest who performed the miracle be- 
gan by douching himself in the bathroom, 
from which, between the plumps of water, 
issued uncouth sounds, sputterings of for- 
mulae and grunts as he finger-twisted. He 
emerged with nothing on but a blue pocket- 
handkerchief for loin-cloth, the small blue 
and white rag with which the Japanese dab 
themselves in lieu of towel. In this attire 
he sallied forth into the garden, and select- 
ing the side of a hill as a propitious spot, 
squatted in the ordinary Japanese posture on 
its slope. 

Cradling the pipe between his hands, he 
prayed over it exhaustively. Then he put 
it, tilted toward the sun, in front of him, and 
exorcised it very energetically by finger- 
charms, one of which strikingly resembled 
an imaginary burning-glass. There was, how- 
ever, nothing between his fingers but air. 
He had spent fifteen minutes thus in digital 
contortions, when he suddenly stopped, dis- 
tressed, and, complaining that the ants tickled 
him by promenading over his bare skin, said 
he thought he would go upon the roof. So 
a ladder was brought and tilted against the 
eaves, and up it he mounted to the tiles, and 



94 OCCULT JAPAN. 

thence by easy slopes to the ridge-pole. In 
this conspicuous yet solitary position he con- 
tinued the incantation. Part of the time I 
sat beside him on the roof ; part of the time 
below upon the ground, looking intently up 
into heaven for the advent of the god. 

Three quarters of an hour passed thus in 
momentary expectation of his descent, but 
nothing happened. At last, much chagrined, 
the priest informed us from the ridge-pole 
that it was of no use that day, and came 
down ; but he signified his intention of re- 
peating the rite till he succeeded, and, with 
this pious resolve, left. 

True to his word, he was there again two 
days later, and remembering poignantly the 
disturbing ants, he decided to ascend at once 
to the ridge-pole. Before he did so, I exam- 
ined him to a certain extent, although he 
had on only one of my own very smallest 
towels. Then two of us took post in the gar- 
den commanding the ridge-pole, and watched 
him for the better part of an hour from our 
vantage points. In another part of the gar- 
den had been set the lunch table, also com- 
manding the ridge-pole, for the expected 
divine visit was sublimely ill-timed, and we 



MIRACLES. 95 

hoped thus, if necessary, to be able to com- 
bine god and mammon. We put the evil 
hour off as long as possible, till at last nature 
could wait no longer, and we decided to sit 
down to our delayed repast, firmly purposing 
to keep one eye constantly on the exorcist. 
We did so religiously till we forgot him a 
moment for the vol-an-vent. Suddenly the 
man on the roof uttered a cry, went into inci- 
pient convulsions, and threw the pipe off 
into the garden, lighted. We instantly re- 
pented our forgetfulness of the god, and 
cursed our love of mammon. But too late, 
as the miracle had been wrought. 

Exactly how the miracle was managed, I 
am unable to guess. The man certainly had 
scant means of concealment about his bare 
person. Naturally, however, we were not 
satisfied, and he professed himself willing to 
repeat the act. He tried the trick after this 
time and time again, but never succeeded 
more. So there this miracle remains, very 
much in the air. But I should say that it 
is said to be very commonly done ; a more 
common thing, indeed, in Japan, than I can 
conceive burning-glasses to be. 

To make the catalogue complete, I ought 



g6 OCCULT JAPAN. 

to mention what, spiritually viewed, are orna- 
mental miracles — such as killing snakes and 
bringing them to life again, rooting burglars 
to the spot, arresting the attempts of assas- 
sins in the act, and defending one's self 
against discourteous dogs. But all such acts 
need not be dwelt upon at length, as they 
are very simple affairs to the truly good, 
and, like some scientific inventions, too ex- 
pensive for general use. 





INCARNATIONS. 




FTER the miracles, or possessions of 
things, follow, in order of esoteric 
ascension, the incarnations, or pos- 
sessions of people. 

The miracles, as I have hinted, are per- 
formed largely with an eye, at least one eye, 
to the public. To drench one's self with 
scalding water or to saunter unconcernedly 
across several yards of scorching coals are 
not in themselves feats that lead particularly 
to heaven, difficult as they may be to do. 
Esoterically regarded, they are rather tests 
of the proficiency already attained in the 
Way of the Gods than portions of that way 
needing actually to be traversed. The real 
burning question is whether the believer be 
pure enough to perform them pleasurably. 
To establish such capability to one's own sat- 
isfaction in the first place, and to the wonder 



98 OCCULT JAPAN. 

of an open-mouthed multitude in the second, 
are the objects the pious promoters have in 
view. 

Not so the incarnations. They too, in- 
deed, serve a double purpose. But whereas 
they are, like the miracles, measures of the 
value of the purity of the man, they are also 
practical mediums of exchange between the 
human spirit and the divine. Foregone for 
directly profitable ends, loss of self is the 
necessary price of an instant part in the 
kingdom of heaven. 

Perhaps the most startling thing about 
these Japanese divine possessions is their 
number ; unless it be that being so numer- 
ous they should have remained so long un- 
known. But it is to be remembered that 
what no one is interested to reveal may 
stay a long while hid. For, with quite An- 
glican etiquette, the Japanese never thought 
to introduce their divine guests and their 
foreign ones to each other. Once intro- 
duced, the two must have met at every turn. 
Indeed, the visitants from the spirit-world 
remind one of those ghost-like forms of 
clever cartoonists, latent in the outlines of 
more familiar shapes, till, by some chance. 



'INCARNATIONS. 99 

divined, they start to view, to remain ever 
after the most conspicuous things in the 
picture. 

Thoroughly religious, the possessions are 
not in the least hierarchic. In theory 
esoteric enough, in practice they are, in the 
older sense of that word, profane. For god- 
possession is no perquisite of the priests. It 
is open to all the sufficiently pure. The 
reason for this lack of exclusiveness is to be 
sought in the essentially every-day family 
character of Shinto. Everybody is a de- 
scendant of the gods, and therefore intrinsi- 
cally no less holy than his neighbor. Indeed, 
if ease of intercourse be any proof of kin- 
ship, the Japanese people certainly make 
good their claim to divine descent. For 
they pass in and out of the world beyond 
as if it were part of this world below. 

Purity is the one prerequisite to divine 
possession, and though to acquire sufficient 
purity be an art, it is an art patent rather in 
the older unindividualized sense of the word. 
Any one who is pure may give lodgment to 
a god, just as any plutocrat may entertain 
modern royalty. The gods, like latter day 
princes, are no respecters of persons. They 



IOO OCCULT JAPAN. 

condescend to come wherever due prepa- 
ration is made for them. It is the host's 
house, not the host that they visit ; the 
presence of the host himself being graciously- 
dispensed with. The man's mind must have 
been vacated of all meaner lodgers, includ- 
ing himself, before the god will deign to 
habit it, but who the man is, is immaterial. 
Such humble folk as barbers and fishmongers 
are among the most favored entertainers of 
divinity. 

But though the social standing of the man 
be immaterial, the social standing of the 
god, on the other hand, is a most material 
point in the matter. For mere association 
with the supernatural is not in Japan neces- 
sarily a question of piety or even of impiety. 
Often it is pure accident. To become pos- 
sessed by a devil, of which bewitchment by a 
fox is the commonest form, may be so purely 
an act of the devil that no blame beyond care- 
lessness attaches to the unfortunate victim. 
Religion claims no monopoly of intercourse 
with the unseen. What religion does claim 
is the ability to admit one to the very best 
heavenly society. For, to say nothing of 
mere animal spirits, there are all grades in 



INCARNA TIONS. I O I 

gods, good gods and bad gods, great gods 
and little ones. Access to the most desir- 
able divinities is the privilege to which the 
church holds the keys. 

Capability to commune is thus in a general 
way endemic, much as salvation is held to be 
in some places, or infant damnation in others. 
And to Japanese thought the gods are very 
close at hand. Unsuspected as such pres- 
ence be by foreigners, in the people's eyes 
the gods are constantly visiting their temples 
and other favorite spots, in a most ubiqui- 
tous manner. Indeed, after introduction to 
their Augustnesses, one is tempted to in- 
clude them in the census and to consider 
the population of Japan as composed of 
natives, globe-trotters, and gods. 

The gods resemble the globe-trotters in 
this, that both are a source of profit to the 
people. For finding themselves in communi- 
cation with the superhuman, the Japanese 
early turned the intimacy to practical ac- 
count. They importuned these their rela- 
tives for that of which men stand most in 
need, the curing of disease. Out of this 
arose a national school of divinopathy. 

Civilized cousins of the medicine-men of 



102 OCCULT JAPAN. 

North America, of the shamans of savage 
tribes the world over, and of Christian sci- 
entists generally, the Japanese practitioners 
differ from most members of the profession 
in the widespread popular character of their 
craft. For though all the practitioners are 
religious men, they are by no means all 
priests. Except for a difference in degree, 
the distinction between the priests who 
practice and the practicing lay brethren lies 
in the professional or avocational character 
of their performance. The priests, of course, 
have no other business than to be pious, 
and to be temporarily a god is an easy exten- 
sion to being perpetually godlike. The lay 
brethren, on the other hand, practice such 
possession only as an outside calling, each 
having his more mundane trade to boot. The 
above-mentioned barber, for example, besides 
industriously shaving man, woman, and child, 
— this detail of the toilet being universally 
indulged in, in Japan, — was able to carry on 
a very lucrative business as a popular other- 
world physician. But he made no analogue 
of the European barber - surgeon of times 
gone by. No particular pursuit has privi- 
lege of the divine practice, barbers being no 



INCARNATIONS. 103 

better than other folk in the eyes of the god. 
A divinopathist's earthly trade may be any- 
thing under heaven. Plastering and clerk- 
ing in a wine-shop are among the latest 
specimen occupations I have met with of 
men thus engaged in business both with 
this world and the next. 

These doctors of divinity receive regular 
diplomas, without which they are not allowed 
to practice. Nominally they are not allowed 
to practice with them, for in the certificates 
no mention is made of the special object 
for which the certificates are issued, permis- 
sion being granted merely to perform prayer, 
which comprehensive phrase covers a multi- 
tude of saintly acts. 

The reason the certificates read so beauti- 
fully vague is not that religion conceives her 
esoteric cults to be profoundly secret, but 
that the government imagines them to be 
barbarous because not in keeping with foreign 
manners and customs. At the same time, 
the paternal powers-that-be dare not pro- 
scribe them. The fact is, they are both too 
Japanese to be countenanced and too Jap- 
anese to be suppressed ; so the authorities 
wink at their practice. The Japanese gov- 



104 OCCULT JAPAN. 

ernment is, in more matters than this one, in 
much the same awkward state of mind as the 
Irish legislator, who declared himself to be 
"for the bill and agin its enforcement." 

Divinopathy has one great advantage over 
other schools of medicine : by the very prep- 
aration for healing others the physician heals 
himself. For mere qualification to be a prac- 
titioner is itself a preventive to earthly ills ; 
much as vaccination precludes small-pox. The 
only question might be whether the cure be 
not worse than the complaint. After an 
account of the rigid self-discipline to be 
undergone before a diploma be possible, and 
then largely kept up for it to continue 
in force, I think it will seem uncommonly 
open to the doubt. Yet there are plenty of 
men who lead this life of daily hardship and 
renunciation for the explicit purpose of en- 
joying the life they renounce ; just as many 
an invalid will give up all that makes life 
worth living for the sake of living the unde- 
sirable residue longer. 

But if the self-martyrdom be duly per- 
formed, the god practically always descends 
on application, and vouchsafes his opinion as 
to the cure of the complaint. Of course his 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 05 

prescriptions are religiously followed, and if 
report speak truth, with an unusually large 
percentage of success. Any and all diseases 
are thus cured on presentation, subject only 
to the willingness of the god. This proviso 
satisfactorily explains the few unfortunate 
failures. 

Divine possession is not limited in its 
applications to the curing of disease. Natu- 
rally the divine opinion is quite as valuable 
on other subjects as on medicine, and is con- 
sequently quite as much in demand. From 
the nature of the gods themselves to the 
weather of the coming month, anything a 
man may want to know is thus inquired 
about of deity. Due care only must be 
exercised to grade the importance of the 
question to the importance of the gods. For 
gods of high rank stand as much on their 
dignity as men both in the matter of coming 
and in the matter of talking after they have 
come. I remember once a most superior 
person, as gods go, who grew very angry 
because I asked him a question he deemed 
it beneath him to answer, although he had 
descended on purpose to impart information, 
and told me, quite up and down, to go to the 



106 OCCULT JAPAN. 

god of agriculture (Inari-sama) for trivialities 
of the kind. 

The character of the company sought is 
what renders excessive self-mortification ne- 
cessary. It is only to the very best heavenly 
society that introductions are so hard to get 
Inferior gods permit intimacy on much easier 
terms. Ordinary ichiko, or trance-diviners, 
for instance, whose deities rank much lower, 
go through a preparation which is mild in 
comparison. 

II. 

The one thing needful to insure divine 
possession is purity. If you are pure, that 
is, blank enough, you can easily give habita- 
tion to a god. Now some men are born 
blanker than others, but none are by nature 
quite blank enough for religious purposes, 
though secularly they often seem so. Addi- 
tional vacuity must somehow be acquired, 
the amount varying not only with the man, 
but with the rank of the god by whom he 
desires to be possessed. To reach this state 
of inanity is the object of the austerities 

(gyd). 

In the days of Ryobu there were two 



INCARNA TIONS. I O 1 / 

classes of men who indulged in mortification 
of the flesh to the attainment of thus losing 
themselves, — gyoja and shinja. With pure 
Shinto, that is, the present resurrection of 
the past pure faith, these names are natu- 
rally not popular, inasmuch as they savor of 
the millennial lapse from orthodoxy. But 
the course in practical piety pursued by the 
would-be pure, having itself always been de 
rigtietir, remains still substantially the same. 

Gyoja, translated, means " a man of auster- 
ities;" and heaven is witness that he is. 
Short of actual martyrdom, I can imagine few 
thornier paths to perfection. He would seem 
to need a cast-iron constitution to stand the 
strain he cheerfully puts upon it. Even to be 
a shinja necessitates a regimen that strikes 
the unregenerate with awe. Though shinja 
means simply "a believer.," the amount of 
works this simple believer must perform be- 
fore his faith is enough to be accepted would 
appall most people. 

The curriculum has this in common with 
more secular ones, that whoso goes in at the 
one end usually comes out at the other, un- 
less protracted austerity fall upon him ; in 
which case he quits in the middle. The fact 



108 OCCULT JAPAN. 

that so many graduate shows that no ex- 
traordinary capacity is required to do so ; in- 
deed, it is the capacity for incapacity that is 
necessary. Plodding perseverance is what 
wins the day. For the course is terrifically 
arduous and terribly long. 

To the purification of the spirit, the road 
lies through the cleansing of the body. To 
this end the two chief exercises are washing 
(suigyo) and fasting (danjiki). Unlimited 
bathing, with most limited meals ; such is 
the backbone of the regimen. The external 
treatment, being the more important of the 
two, claims notice first. 

Washing is the most obvious kind of puri- 
fication the world over. Cleanliness, we say, 
is next to godliness ; though at times in indi- 
vidual specimens the two would seem not to 
have made each other's acquaintance. But 
in Japan cleanliness very nearly is godliness. 
This charming compatibility is due possibly 
to the godliness being less, but certainly 
chiefly to the cleanliness being more. 

Even secularly the Japanese are super- 
naturally cleanly. Every day of their lives 
forty millions of folk parboil like one. Nor 
do they hurry themselves in the act. The 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 09 

nation spends an inordinate amount of time 
in the national tub ; as becomes pecuniarily 
apparent when you hire a man by the day, or, 
stranger yet, by the job. You are tempted 
at times to suppose your toiler continuously 
either tubbing or teaing. Doubtless such 
totality is due to emotional exaggeration on 
your part, but it is beyond prejudice that he 
soaks in his tub a good working minority of 
his time. 

When it comes to religious matters, it 
would seem as if this estimable quality were 
carried to its inevitable defect. For, from a 
pardonable pastime, bathing here becomes an 
all-engrossing pursuit. The would-be devotee 
spends his waking life at little else, and he 
sleeps less than most men at that. Not only 
is it his bounden duty to bathe six appointed 
times in every twenty-four hours, but he 
should also bathe as often as he may be- 
tween. The more he bathes the better he 
becomes. 

Now, if he simply soaked in a hot water 
tub as his profane friends do, this might be 
merely the ecstatic height of dissipatioa 
But he does nothing of the kind. No gentle 
parboiling is his portion ; perpetual goose- 



110 OCCULT JAPAN. 

flesh is his lot. For in his case no such 
amelioration of nature is allowed. Whatever 
the season of the year, his ablutions must be 
made in water of untempered temperature, 
fresh from the spring ; in the depth of win- 
ter a thing of cold comfort indeed. It then 
goes by the expressive name of kangyo, or 
the cold austerity. What is more, he takes 
this uncongenial application in the mode to 
produce the most poignant effect — with the 
shock of a shower-bath. 

Esoterically there are grades in the clean- 
sing capabilities of shower-baths. For him 
who would reach the height of holiness the 
correct thing is to walk under a waterfall 
and be soused. This luxury is, of course, 
only to be had in the hills. In default of 
a waterfall, a douche from a dipper will do. 
But on religious grounds it is not to be rec- 
ommended. 

Man-made methods are imperative in town 
owing to the lack of natural ones, which is 
one reason why the hills are the proper 
habitat for novitiates into the higher life. In 
the good old days such habitat was a neces- 
sity, not that men were less pure then, but, 
on the contrary, that they strove to become 



INCARNA TIONS. Ill 

yet purer, so gydja aver ; pure Shint5 says it 
was because they had then lapsed from or- 
thodoxy. However that be, when gydja were 
gydja they were anchorites pure and simple. 
They dwelt as hermits among the hills, seeing 
no man by the space of three years, and re- 
ducing themselves as nearly as might be to a 
state of nature ; of the inoffensive kind, for, 
as their diet will show, they belonged rather 
to the herbivorous than to the carnivorous 
order of wild animal. After they had be- 
come quite detached from all that distin- 
guishes humanity, they returned to the world 
to live hermitically in the midst of it, repair- 
ing again at suitable seasons to mountaineer- 
ing meditation. Such were the men who 
opened, as the consecrated phrase is, On- 
take, that is, who first succeeded in reaching 
its sacred summit. There are still a few of 
these estimable creatures at large in the hills. 
I have myself met some of them, there and 
elsewhere, after their return to society, and 
have gazed with interest at caves pointed out 
to me which they had once inhabited. 

But gydja generally have deteriorated with 
the world at large. They are far from being 
what they were, so far that a conscientious 



112 OCCULT JAPAN. 

man hardly feels that he has the right to call 
himself a gydja at all, as one of the class 
humbly informed me. He blushed, he said, 
when he thought of the austerities of the 
olden time. A modern gydja was little more 
austere than a shinja who made his summer 
pilgrimages when he could. This was per- 
haps a gloomy view to take of the situation, 
for one usually finds the past not so superior 
to the present as report represents. But 
even at its worst, the deterioration would 
seem a case only for professional sympathy. 
For whatever the regimen may have been, 
there is at all events enough severity left it 
to satisfy any decent desire for self-martyr- 
dom. 

That mountains should be deemed pecul- 
iarly good points for entering another world 
is not unnatural. With inclines incapable of 
cultivation, they do not conduce to socia- 
bility, but enable the dweller there the more 
effectively to meditate himself into inanity. 
Unjogged by suggestion, the average mind 
lapses into a comatose condition, till the man 
comes eventually to exist upon the border- 
land of trance. But as it is not convenient 
for everybody to retire to the hills for three 



INC A RNA TIONS. 1 1 3 

years at a time, even for this sublime pur- 
pose, it has been found possible to combine 
purity enough for vacuity with a tolerably 
secular existence. The gyo in the two cases 
differ only as a state of nature differs from 
a condition of civilization. 

This brings us back again to the bath, 
for we are not half through with it yet. If 
the neophyte be not taking the waterfall in 
all simplicity on his head, he is outdoing 
Diogenes by living not simply in his tub, but 
tubbing. A cold water douche begins the 
day, another marks its meridian, and a third 
brings it to a close. But the day does not 
bring the douche to a close. Just before 
turning in the neophyte must take another 
dip, after which it might indeed be thought 
that he should sleep in peace. But such 
would savor of pandering to the flesh. The 
most vital ablution of all, therefore, the crux 
purificationiS) occurs at two A. m. (yatsugyo). 
At this unearthly hour the poor creature 
must wake himself up, stagger half asleep 
to the waterfall or bathroom, souse himself 
with a dipper or be soused by the fall, while 
his teeth chatter a prayer and his fingers 
twist themselves into cabalistic knots, he 



114 OCCULT JAPAN. 

himself shivering the while from top to toe ; 
then, brought up standing in this manner, 
try if he may to sleep again. Even should 
he succeed, his doze may not be for long, 
for with the dawn he must douche again, 
the sunrise austerity {Jii-no-de-gyo). 

Unearthly the midnight hour may ad- 
visedly be called, for it is for precisely such 
attribute that the time is chosen.. At that 
dead of night, when every sound is hushed, 
and even the plants, they say, lie locked in 
sleep, the gods can the better hear. And 
this, oddly enough, in spite of their being 
very much engaged with their own spatter- 
ings and sputterings, for the gods them- 
selves are then taking their baths, — the 
gods of the mountains under their water- 
falls, and the gods of the plain in the riv- 
ers thereof. In Japan, even the gods wash 
and are clean, and, like their human poor 
relations, apparently make of the bath a time 
of social reunion and merriment. They hear, 
nevertheless, and reward the bather accord- 
ingly. 

With a shinja this nocturnal exercise is 
optional. It all depends upon how pure he 
intends to become. Of course it is a great 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 1 5 

deal better to be thorough, and not for the 
sake of the flesh to shirk what shall ethere- 
alize the soul. A little more bathing can 
do no harm — unless it kill, which is beside 
the point. 

Extras, that is baths at odd hours, are to 
be taken ad libitum by all. The rule is : 
When in doubt, douche. 

This extreme lavatory exercise lasts indefi- 
nitely — as long as the devotee can stand 
it. And in diminishing doses it is kept up 
through life. To those who perform it in all 
its rigor under the waterfalls in the hills, 
the gods graciously show signs of accepted 
favor. For round the head of the holy, as 
he stands beneath the fall, the sunlight glan- 
cing through the spray rims a halo which all 
men may see and the reverent recognize as 
proof of sanctity. The skeptic may possibly 
ascribe it to a different cause, having per- 
chance seen the like around the shadow of 
his own head cast, as he sat in the saddle, 
upon the clipped grass of a polo field. He 
will certainly do so when he perceives sim- 
ilar halos about the heads of his godless 
friends. Yet that abandoned character, Ben- 
venuto Cellini, on suddenly remarking one 



1 1 6 OCCUL T JAPAN". 

day an aureole radiating from the reflection 
of his head in the water, as he leaned over 
the side of a boat, took it at once for sign 
certain that his salvation was assured. 

So much for the fresh-water cure. To sum 
it up in a maxim, — adapting to its gentler 
warfare with the spirits of evil Danton's 
celebrated one about war in general, — we 
may say that the three essentials to success 
in it are : " De l'eau douce ! de l'eau douce ! 
et encore de l'eau douce ! " 

III. 

Fasting (danjiki) is the next mortification 
to the flesh. The poor brute of a body un- 
equally yoked to so indomitable a spirit fares 
ill. For it is deprived at once both of super- 
ficial gratification and of solid nourishment. 
The would-be pure must abstain from meat, 
from fish, from things cooked, and, compre- 
hensively, from whatever has taste or smell. 
In short, he should lead gastronomically an 
utterly insipid existence. He may not even 
indulge in the national tea, a beverage taste- 
less and bodiless enough in all conscience 
to escape proscription. Salt is specially to 
be shunned (shiwodacki). It is worth noting 



INCARNA TIONS, 1 1 *] 

that on the way to a higher life the appar- 
ently harmless chloride of sodium should 
work as banefully within a man as it works 
beneficially without him. 

Greater deprivation than all these, even 
tobacco falls under the ban. In that earthly 
paradise of smokers, the Japanese Islands, 
where the use of the weed rises superior 
even to sex, it seems indeed hard that only 
those dedicate to deity should be debarred it. 
But the road to immaterial peace of mind 
knows no material narcotic by the way. 
After he has attained to a holy calm without 
it, the lay brother returns to moderate indul- 
gence in this least gross form of gluttony. 
The professed ascetic continues to abjure it 
his life long. 

Nuts and berries form the staple of the 
gyojds diet, if he be living a hermit among 
the hills ; buckwheat flour if, though not of 
the world, he be still in it. He may also eat 
vegetables and dried persimmons and grapes 
in their season ; but he must eat most 
sparingly of whatever it be. One bowl of 
buckwheat and a dish of greens at noon is 
sustenance enough for the day. Breakfast 
and supper are forbidden panderings to the 



Il8 OCCULT JAPAN. 

flesh. To wash this next to nothing down 
cold water is allowed him, if his external 
applications have not already given him 
enough of it. 

Not unnaturally a diet of such subtraction 
speedily reduces him to his lowest mental 
terms, a state which he still further simpli- 
fies by purely mental means. 

To start with, the general character of his 
existence conduces to that end. Whether 
he be living an actual anchorite among the 
mountains or only a would-be one in town, 
solitude complete or partial tends by well- 
known laws to convert him into either a 
maniac or a simpleton. To a species of the 
latter it is his ambition to attain. 

To this end untold repetitions of elemen- 
tary prayers admirably conduce. It would 
be hard indeed to overestimate the efficacy 
of such process for producing utter blank- 
ness of mind. The subdued chanting by 
rote over and over again of words to which 
any thought has long since bade good-by 
tends in a twofold manner to mental vacuity. 
There is just enough mental action going 
on to keep the mind from thinking of any- 
thing else, and yet it is so ineffably unin- 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 1 9 

teresting that attention, do what it will, 
inevitably nods. It is a mistake to sup- 
pose that the soothing effects of church are 
wholly due to sound sleep during the ser- 
mon. Any auditory routine is competent 
to compel it. Rhythmic monotone is as 
potent a lullaby as more consecrated cradle- 
song. The eventual end of both would be 
sleep ; as we see with the latter in the case 
of an infant in his crib or of middle-aged 
gentlemen in their pews, and in our own 
case with the former when we conquer our 
insomnia by methodically counting to a 
hundred an indefinite number of times. 
The chanter does not attain to this supreme 
nirvana because it is he himself that is 
preaching the sermon ; but the soporific 
power of these rites in helping to a virtuous 
vacancy of mind is quite specific, and partly 
accounts incidentally for the long-winded- 
ness of preachers. 

To this same intent, the more searching 
brother practices upon himself further in- 
genious devices. One of the most effective 
of these is the concentrating his whole 
attention upon his own breathing. Mentally, 
he scrutinizes each expiration — the in- 



120 OCCULT JAPAN. 

spirations appear to be somewhat better 
able to look after themselves — with molec- 
ular minuteness. Each breath as it passes 
out is thus subjected to the spirit's picket 
challenge. By giving his whole mind in this 
manner to the mere method of existence, he 
effectually prevents any ideas from stealing 
into that mind unawares. After prolonged 
duty of the sort, consciousness, like all really 
good sentinels, nods at her post ; in which, 
unlike the good sentinels, lies the virtue of 
the deed, though unsuspected of the doer. 
For divine possession in Japan, like other 
Japanese things, is not a science but an art. 
The reason given by religion for this inspec- 
tion of one's breathing is that by prayerful 
concentration upon the source of spirit one's 
evil spirit may be expelled and a good 
afflatus drawn in. One of the truly pious 
when quantitively questioned told me that 
he had thus kept watch on himself for three 
weeks at a time, only pausing in the pursuit 
unavoidably to eat and sleep. It is sadden- 
ing to think to what farther tenuities he 
might not have attained had he not been 
thus grossly shackled to the flesh. 

Ablutions and abstinence are thus the two 



INCARNATIONS. 121 

great gyo, which endless prayers, mechan- 
ical finger-charms, and careful breathing help 
accentuate. 

But besides the regular stock austerities, 
there are several supererogatory ones. There 
is, for example, the gyo called tsumadacki, 
which consists in walking on the tips of one's 
toes wherever one has occasion to go. A 
species of pious ballet-dancing this. 

Then there is the austerity of never look- 
ing upon a woman's face. This martyrdom 
the ascetic who had practiced it spoke of 
as a very severe self-infliction indeed. But 
in view of the vast subjective disturbance 
wrought even unconsciously by the sex, I 
should judge it to be one of the most essen- 
tial austerities of all. For no man who is 
a man can take that absorbing interest in 
nothing at all which the rules require while 
a pair of piquant eyes and a petticoat lead 
his imagination their irresistible dance. To 
be insensible to such charm were to have 
attained to complete insensibility already. 

Compared with this renunciation, the next 
gyo must be a positive pleasure. It consists 
in letting unlimited mosquitoes bite one to 
satiety for seven consecutive nights. 



122 OCCULT JAPAN. 

The aptitude of all these artifices to the 
end desired is more or less apparent : some 
tending to slow down the whole machine; 
or by weakening the body, or by tiring the 
mind, some to dull the sense perceptions 
by persistent attention to what is essentially 
incapable of holding it, — all to reduce the 
brain to an inactive state. The road is un- 
necessarily long because originally discov- 
ered by chance, and then blindly followed by 
succeeding ages without rational improve- 
ment. An immense amount of labor is thus 
in point of fact thrown away. How much 
quicker a like result can be obtained by the 
application of a little science, modern hyp- 
notism shows. 

Now there will have been noticed in the 
list of austerities a steady departure from 
primitive simplicity. This decrease in sim- 
plicity is strictly paralleled by the decrease 
in their respective use. Everybody washed, 
though comparatively few poised on their 
toes. The several vogue of the austerities is 
further paralleled by the position occupied 
by those who practiced them, in that long 
chain of mixed belief which, dependent from 
pure Shinto at the one end, is supported by 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 23 

Buddhism from the other. The mosquito 
ordeal, for example, is quite Buddhist, while 
abnormal ablutions are not. The significance 
of these two parallelisms will appear later on. 
What the Japanese sensations are during 
the process may be gathered from the per- 
sonally narrated experience of a certain be- 
liever, who sufficiently expresses the type. 
The given individual was first minded to 
become a practitioner in consequence of the 
surprising cure, through god-possession, of 
his master's sick son. He was at the time 
apprenticed to a dyer, and was away on a 
journey when the cure was wrought. Much 
impressed by what he heard on his return, 
he determined to seek out the holy man who 
had effected the miraculous result, and, by 
following in his footsteps, to attain to pro- 
ficiency himself. The gydja received him 
cordially, and kindly indulged him in his 
desire by putting him to the washing (snigyo) 
and the fasting (danjiki) austerities in all 
their rigor for three weeks. At the end of 
that time he was so used up that he could 
hardly stand. One bowl of rice and a dish 
of greens a day are little enough to help one 
through such a course of ablutionary train- 



124 OCCULT JAPAN. 

ing. Nevertheless, for fifty days more he 
kept on with but little addition to his mea- 
gre diet, washing lavishly the while. At the 
close of this second period he relaxed some- 
what and ate, as he expressed it, in moder- 
ation, that is, immoderately little ; which 
ameliorated treatment of himself he kept up 
for the next three years. He was twenty 
when he went through his novitiate, and 
sixty-three when he told me of it; for the 
intervening forty-three years he had dieted 
and douched daily. 

No very definite sensation, follows, he says, 
the exercise of the austerities. He simply 
feels an increase in virtue, whatever that 
may mean. Fortunately it would seem to 
show itself in a practical form. For as he 
continues in the regimen he gets to know, 
he says, good and evil spontaneously. When 
a bit of good luck is coming to him or his 
family, or a misfortune about to befall them, 
he feels it beforehand by a certain mental 
light-heartedness, or a corresponding oppres- 
sion of spirit. Finally he arrives at being 
able to predict everything. Whether he can 
always avert what he is able to foretell may 
be open to doubt. For consequent upon this 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 2 5 

exposure of his capabilities the poor man 
contracted a very bad cold, and was confined 
for a couple of weeks to his house. 

He was, as the mention of his family- 
showed, a married man. In this he made no 
exception to the rule. All lay brethren marry 
as a matter of course. Indeed, in Shint5 
proper, the priests wed like anybody else. 
Nor do such as follow the austerities commit 
themselves in the least to celibacy. For 
matrimony and self-consecration to the gods 
do not, it appears, conflict. In spite of the 
great advantage that accrues to piety from 
never looking upon a woman's face, men- 
tioned above, mere matrimony would seem 
innocuous. Either femininity in repeated 
doses loses its intoxicating effect, or acquired 
sanctity renders the believer superior to it. 
Perhaps, as one of my married friends sug- 
gested to me, marriage is sufficient austerity 
itself. 

However that may be, certain it is that 
nowadays even gydja wed without detriment 
to their souls. I am by no means sure 
that they did not in the olden time, for so 
commonplace a detail of a far oriental's life 
as matrimony might well have escaped 



126 OCCULT JAPAN. 

chronicling. Still there is no doubt that 
times have changed for the worse with gydja, 
as my gydja averred. Even pecuniarily so 
much is evident. In the good old days they 
supported themselves in peace and plenty 
from the offerings of grateful patients ; now 
alas, as he said pathetically, these gratuities 
do not suffice, and many a worthy soul is 
forced to eke out a slender subsistence by 
secular work in secret. Making toothpicks 
was the industry he affectingly instanced, 
when pressed to be more explicit. To be 
driven to such extremity must seem indeed 
pitiable, even to the undevout. 

Thus, then, do the pious get themselves 
into a general potentiality of possession. 
Before possession becomes a fact, however, 
a short renewal of extreme austerities must 
be undergone ; like the slight shake that 
crystallizes the solution. On notice of a 
case to be cured the practitioner enters 
again the rigors of the washing and the fast, 
and keeps them up for a week if he be very 
thorough, two or three days if that will 
suffice. The amount of abstinence depends 
upon the gravity of the case. There is some- 
thing highly satisfactory in this dieting of 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 2 7 

the physician in place of the patient. From 
the patient's point of view it instantly raises 
divinopathy above all other pathies on earth. 
Besides, it is more thoroughly logical. For 
why, indeed, should not the physician, if well 
paid for it, be expected to furnish all the 
elements of his cure ! 

IV. 

We have now reached the function itself. 
That this is imposing in the first sense of 
that word, that is, impressive, the hold it has 
had on man sufficiently testifies ; that it is 
imposing in the second sense, that is, a sham, 
is a supposition which the first view of one 
of these trances would suffice to dispel. 

We will first take up the Ryobu form 
which is the commonest one. The ceremony 
with which Ryobu has surrounded the act is 
finely in keeping with the impressiveness of 
the act itself. So sense-compelling a service 
you shall find it hard to match in the masses 
of any other church. But more constraining 
still are the energy and the sincerity with 
which the whole is done. It is small won- 
der that the already susceptible subject feels 
its charm when even bystanders are stirred. 



128 OCCULT JAPAN. 

As with the gyo, purification is of its 
essence. For not only must a general pu- 
rification antecede the act, but a special 
purification must immediately precede it. 
And first the spot must be holy. Now only 
one spot is holy by nature : the sacred 
mountain Ontake or its affiliated peaks. All 
others must be purified. These may be of 
two kinds : temples, public or private, — for 
most houses have what is called a gods'-shelf, 
{kamidana), which does them for family 
shrine, — and ordinary rooms. The first are 
kept perpetually purified ; the second are 
specially purified for the occasion. 

If there be no permanent shrine, a tempo- 
rary one is constructed. Its central motif is 
a gohei upon a wand, stood upright on a ped- 
estal. By the side of the gohei are lighted 
candles, and flanking these, sprigs of sakaki, 
the sacred tree of Shinto. In front of the 
gohei is set out a feast for the god. The 
feast varies in elaborateness according to the 
occasion, its principal dishes being a bowl 
of rice, a saucer of salt, and a cup of sake, 
the national wine. In addition to these 
indispensables, any form of uncooked human 
food may be offered to the god, according to 



INCARNATIONS. 120, 

the sumptuousness of the repast it is desired 
to give him. 

The shrine is set up in the tokonoma, or 
recess of honor, of the room. At the back 
is placed a hanging-scroll of the gods of 
Ontake. Some five feet in front of the 
tokouoma, in the centre of the sacred space, 
a porous earthenware bowl is placed upon 
a stand, and in the bowl is built a pyre of 
incense sticks, usually beginning as a log-hut 
and terminating as a wigwam. 

Then the place is purified. This is done 
by inclosing the room, or the part of it in 
front of the shrine, by strings from which 
depend at intervals small gohei. These are 
usually arranged after the so-called seven- 
five-three {shield -go -scut) pattern; seven of 
them being nearest the shrine, five on each 
side, and three at the farther end. From the 
space so inclosed all evil spirits are driven 
out by prayer, by finger-charms, by sprink- 
ling of salt, by striking of sparks from a flint 
and steel, and by brandishing of a gohei- 
wand used as an exorcising air-broom. 

After the purification of the place, the 
next duty of the officiators is the purifica- 
tion of their persons. For this purpose they 



130 OCCULT JAPAN. 

all go out to the well or to the bathroom to 
bathe, and return clad in the Ontake pil- 
grim dress, a single white garment stamped 
with the names of the Ontake gods, with the 
name of the mountain itself, and with the 
signs of their ko or pilgrim club. For, as 
we shall see more particularly later, all 
Ryobu adepts, whether priests or laymen, 
are enrolled in some Ontake pilgrim club. 
This solitary garment is bound about the 
waist by a white girdle. 

In its full complement the company con- 
sists of eight persons. There is, first, the 
man whom the god is to possess. He 
is called the nakaza, or seat-in-the-midst. 
Equal to him in consideration is the man 
who presides over the function and who is 
to talk with deity, the exorcist, so to speak, 
called the maeza, or seat-in-front. Next in 
religious rank is the wakiza y or side -seat. 
He is one of the shit en, or four heavens, spe- 
cialized as the tohd, or eastern side, the hoppo, 
or northern side, the nambo, or southern side, 
and the saihd, or western side. Their duty 
is to ward off evil influences from the four 
quarters. The two front ones also have the 
charge of the paraphernalia, and the nambo 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 3 1 

the care of the patient. In addition to these 
six there is a deputy niaeza and a sort of 
clerk of court. The impersonality of these 
names is worth noting. It is the post, not 
the person, that is designated. 

Severally clapping their hands, the per- 
formers now enter upon the ceremony proper. 
This consists of two parts : a general purifi- 
cation service, separated by a pause and a 
rearrangement from the communion service 
itself. The one is an essential preface to 
the other. 

When the last man is fairly launched upon 
the general incantation, the maeza starts one 
of the purification prayers (karat), into which 
the others instantly fall. The prayer chosen 
to begin with is usually the misogi no harai. 
It is a chant chiefly in monotone, only occa- 
sionally lapsing for a note into the octave 
or the fifth. Every now and then a chanter 
sinks into a guttural grunt as if mentally 
fatigued, very suggestive of a mechanical 
dulling of the mind. 

The harai over, or rather bridged by some 
of the company, the maeza starts another, 
the rest take it in swing, and the eight are 
off again together. In this manner prayer 



132 OCCULT JAPAN. 

after prayer is intoned, and uta or songs 
chanted in like cadence between. Shakings 
of the shakiijo, a small crosier with metal 
rings, emphasize the rhythm, and the pilgrim 
bells rung at intervals point the swift pro- 
cessional chorus of the whole. 

The pyre is then lighted, and as the flames 
leap into the air, prayers ascend with them 
to Fudo-sama. Meanwhile, pieces of paper 
with characters inscribed on them are rap- 
idly passed to and fro through the flame by 
the maeza an unlimited number of times ; yet 
do they not burn, an immunity due to pos- 
session by the gods. Then he holds each 
for a moment stationary in the flame, upon 
which it catches fire and is caught upward 
by the air current, to float away, the shriv- 
eled shape of its former self. The paper is 
in effigy of the disease, and, according as it 
ascends or fails to do so, will the disease 
itself depart or stay. Some exorcists, with 
more wisdom, perhaps, say that the manner 
of its ascension only is significant. But 
mark how pitying are the gods. For since 
the flame makes its own draft, that must 
indeed be an unlucky wraith of tissue ash 
that fails of being well caught up with it to 
heaven. 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 3 3 

More chanting brings the purification ser- 
vice to a close. 

The bowl that held the pyre is then re- 
moved, and sheets of paper are laid in the 
centre of the sacred space in the new places 
the performers are to occupy. Then the 
goftei-wand is brought down from the shrine 
and stood up in the midst. 

The men take their seats for the descent 
of the god. Up to this time they squat on 
their heels in the usual Japanese fashion ; 
from now on they sit with folded legs, which 
some say is the exalted seat of old Japan, 
and others ascribe to Buddhist influence. 
The maeza seats himself first, opposite and 
facing the shrine, folds his legs in front of 
him, and, drawing his dress over them, ties 
it together from the sides and then brings 
the farther end up and ties it to his girdle. 
This is the usual Japanese mode of tying up 
a bundle. The others do the same, the shiten 
seating themselves at the four corners, and 
the deputy maeza and clerk by the side of 
the maeza. The nakaza is as yet unseated, 
officially speaking. 

All face the gohei and go through a fur- 
ther short incantation. Then the wakiza 



134 OCCULT JAPAN. 

reverently removes the gohei-^and and holds 
it while the nakaza seats himself where it 
was, facing from the shrine, tucks himself in 
as the others did, and closes his eyes. After 
some private finger-twistings and prayer on 
the part of the nakaza and the maeza, the 
nakaza brings his hands together in front 
of him and the maeza, taking the go/zez-wand 
from the wakzza, places it between them. 
Then all the others join in chant, and watch 
for the advent of the god. 

For a few minutes, the time varying with 
the particular nakaza, the man remains per- 
fectly motionless. Then suddenly the wand 
begins to quiver ; the quiver gains till all at 
once the man is seized with a convulsive 
throe — the throe, as we say in truth, of one 
possessed. In some trances the eyes then 
open, the eyeballs being rolled up half out 
of sight ; in others the eyes remain shut. 
Then the throe subsides again to a perma- 
nent quiver, the eyes, if open, fixed in the 
trance look. The man has now become the 
god. 

The maeza, bowed down, then reverently 
asks the name of the god, and the god an- 
swers ; after which the maeza prefers his 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 3 5 

petitions, to which the god. makes reply. 
When he has finished asking what he will 
and the god has finished replying, the nakaza 
falls forward on his face. 

The maeza concludes with a prayer ; then 
striking the nakaza on the back, with or 
without the ceremony of previously writing 
a cabalistic character (a Sanskrit one) there, 
the maeza wakes him up. One of the others 
gives the man water from a cup, and when 
he has been able to swallow it, the rest set 
to and rub his arms and body out of their 
cataleptic contraction. For at first it is prac- 
tically impossible to take the wand from his 
unnatural grasp. 

Although eight men are considered the 
proper number by Ryobu canons for a full 
presentation of the function, so many are 
not really vital to its performance. Two are 
all that are absolutely essential ; one to be 
possessed, and one to hear what the god 
may deign to say. I have seen trances with 
officiators in number anywhere from two to 
eight. One man alone would be sufficient, 
were it not a part of the rite that some one 
should hear the god's words ; for one man 
can take the parts of both maeza and nakaza 



1 36 OCCUL T JAPAN. ' 

in turn, doing the maezas part for the pre- 
liminary purification, and the nakazd s for 
the possession itself. In this case the second 
man acts as wakiza. Ordinarily, however, 
when two men take part, one is the maeza 
and the other the nakaza from the begin- 
ning to the end. With three men, the third 
is wakiza. Of this kind was the posses- 
sion upon Ontake, in the case of the three 
devotees. 

From the moment he claps his hands each 
begins upon a chain of finger-charms, of the 
effective uncouthness of which it is difficult 
to convey any idea in words. Their uncanny 
character is distinctly the most impressive 
thing in the function. They are called in- 
miisubi or seal-bindings, which describes 
their intent, and incidentally their appear- 
ance. In form it is playing holy cat's-cradle 
with one's hands, but in feeling it is the most 
intense action imaginable. The fingers are 
tied into impossible knots with a vehemence 
which is almost maniacal ; and the tying is 
timed to consecrated formulae that, in conse- 
quence of the performer's exaltation, take 
on much of the emotion of a curse. 

The several twists typify all manner of 



INC A RNA TIONS. 1 3 7 

acts. The position of the fingers in one 
symbolizes a well, raising which above the 
head and then upsetting it souses one with 
holy water. Another represents a very real- 
istic pull, which constrains a good spirit to 
enter the performer. A third compels evil 
spirits to avaunt ; and so forth and so on. 
There is quite an esoteric library on the 
subject, and so thoroughly defined is the 
system that the several finger-joints bear 
special names. 

The seal-bindings are themselves sealed 
by a yet simpler digital device wrought with 
one hand, and called cutting the kuji or the 
nine characters. It consists in drawing in 
the air an imaginary five-barred gate, made 
of five horizontal bars and four vertical posts. 
This gate is to keep out the evil spirits. 
The reason there are nine strokes and not 
ten, which is the far-eastern dozen, is due to 
the far-eastern practice of always providing 
an enemy with a possible way of escape. If 
the Japanese devils could not thus run away 
it is said they would become dangerous. 
For, as a far-eastern proverb hath it, — 

" The cornered rat 
Will bite the cat." 



138 OCCULT JAPAN. 

At first I was inclined to believe these 
finger-charms Buddhist. But although the 
Ryobuists say that they are, I have never 
seen a Buddhist practice them. On the 
other hand, they are professedly not Shinto, 
and are shunned by pure Shintoists accord- 
ingly. Their most devoted admirers are the 
Ryobuists themselves. 

The finger-charms are knotted upon one 
or other of the great purification prayers 
(harai). Of these there are three chief ones : 
the ??iisogi no karat, the nakatomi no harai, 
and the rokkon shojo no harai. The misogi 
no harai I believe to be pure Shinto. The 
nakatomi no harai undoubtedly is a native 
production, and is said to have been com- 
posed by an ancestor of the present high- 
priest of the Shinshiu sect. The rokkon 
shojo no harai is of Ryobu origin. It is the 
great Ontake processional, chanted by the 
pilgrims as they toil slowly up the moun- 
tain's slopes. 



Having thus sketched the possession cult, 
I will now present some specimen trances 
of the various Ryobu varieties of it. These 



INC A RNA TIONS. 1 3 9 

shall be followed by the Buddhist posses- 
sions, and these in turn by the pure Shinto 
ones. When we shall thus have looked at 
the possession objectively in the manner, we 
will consider it subjectively in the man. 

Heading the list comes the first possession 
that I succeeded in obtaining, — a parlor-pos- 
session in my own house. After very proper 
coquetting with mystery, a priest of the 
Shinshiu sect consented to visit me for the 
purpose with a friend as side-seat (wakiza). 
His performance was a case of playing con- 
secutively two parts in the function: first 
that of exorcist, and then of entranced. 
Although he was a pure Shinto priest, the 
ceremony was according to Ryobu rite ; for 
he was a reformed Ryobuist, and his refor- 
mation did not extend to the rite. 

His introductory scene-setting enabled me 
to gaze for the first time upon the faces of 
the Ontake gods. For he began by hanging 
up in the room's recess of honor a scroll 
depicting those deities ; whom as yet I knew 
only as voices — voces et prceterea nil. But 
inasmuch as talking is their chief character- 
istic, I accepted unhesitatingly their portraits 
for speaking likenesses. There were nine 



I40 OCCULT JAPAN. 

of their Augustnesses in all, standing ped- 
estaled respectively on precipitous points 
of the conventional tri-peaked mount in con- 
ventionally inapt attitudes. They all wore 
the comfortable cast of countenance and gen- 
erally immaculate get-up quite incompatible 
with ever getting up a mountain. This, of 
course, proved their divinity. The great god 
of Ontake towered commandingly on the 
highest peak, flanked by two lesser Shinto 
divinities perched on somewhat lower pin- 
nacles. Below these stood Fudo-sama — a 
conglomerate god from nobody knows ex- 
actly where, popularly worshiped as the god 
of fire, which it is certain he was not, but 
possessing, however, for some inscrutable 
cause a certain lien on the land. He, too, 
was flanked by two companions on suitable 
inferior vantage points. These peopled the 
mid-heaven of ascent. Still lower down came 
three canonized saints of Ryobu, the men 
who had opened the mountain by first suc- 
ceeding in getting to the top ; for which feat 
they were now rewarded by being placed 
humbly at the bottom. The relative posi- 
tions of the three classes of gods is worth 
notice, for such is their invariable ranking 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 4 1 

in Ryobu pictures ; a grading in greatness 
which says something about the Shinto an- 
cestry of the act. 

After the priest had duly hung up this 
happy family portrait and arranged the altar 
and incense pyre, he went and bathed, re- 
turning clothed in his Ontake pilgrim robe, 
the very one in which he had himself several 
times made the ascent of the mountain, and 
which was therefore correspondingly pure. 
It showed this unmistakably. I think it was 
perhaps the dirtiest garment I have ever 
seen ; at all events it was the most self-evi- 
dently so. It convinced at once of holiness 
in spite of the fact that it fortunately lacked 
all odor of sanctity. For it was internally as 
clean as externally it was dirty ; it being, as 
we have seen, as imperative upon a palmer 
to wash himself as it is not to wash his robe. 

Through the garment's present grimy gray 
glimmered traces of red characters ; the 
stamped certificates, these, of his ascents. 
Their glory, enhanced by being hidden in an 
ideographic tongue, shone all the more re- 
splendent for being thus mellowed by travel- 
stain. It was a pious thought that induced 
the wearer later to let his mantle fall, in 



142 OCCULT JAPAN. 

gift, upon me ; for it now rests from its 
wanderings among my most valued posses- 
sions. 

The pale gray of his ascension robe took 
on a further tinge of glory from the glow of 
the burning incense pyre. The seemingly 
conscious flame lapped the pyre eagerly 
about, and then leaped searchingly up into 
the void, to send its soul in aromatic surges 
of smoke in curling rise toward heaven, into 
every highest nook and cranny of the wood- 
paneled ceiling of the room. From without, 
the glow of dying day stole through the slid- 
ing screens, tinging the gloom within ; while 
pervading it all like a perfume rose the chant 
of the pilgrim-clad petitioner, rolling up in 
surges of its own, smothering sense to some 
delicious dream. Behind, silent and immov- 
able, sat the assistant, a statue bowed in 
prayer. 

Through the flame the priest passed, one 
after the other, written sheets emblematic of 
disease ; passed each deliberately to and fro 
an amazing number of times, yet without so 
much as scorching it. After which he held it 
there motionless for a moment and it swiftly 
took fire. As it did so his chant swelled. 



INCARNATIONS. 1 43 

The shriveled shape wavered, poised, and 
then rose with the chant toward the rafters 
of the room. Its prayer had been heard and 
granted. 

When the last embers of the pyre had 
burned themselves out, and the orange was 
slowly fading to ash, the priest brought his 
chant to a close, and, rising, removed the 
bowl. Then, spreading pieces of paper in a 
sort of Greek cross upon the mats where the 
bowl had been, he seated himself upon them 
in the nakazds place, facing out from the 
shrine and prefacing his act by a short 
prayer, took the go/iet-wand in both hands 
and shut his eyes. After some minutes 
of hushed suspense 4he wand suddenly 
twitched ; the twitching grew to convulsions, 
the wand striking the man first on the fore- 
head with quite irresponsible violence, and 
then with like frenzy on the floor. Finally 
it came back still quivering to its former 
position before his face. I say "it," for in 
truth it seemed rather the wand than the 
man that caused the shaking. Trembling 
there a few moments, it went off again into 
another throe ; and so the action continued 
intermittently rising and falling, till at last 



144 OCCULT JAPAN. 

the man himself fell face forward upon the 
floor. 

The assistant advanced, raised the pos- 
sessed to a sitting posture, and fell to thump- 
ing him on the back and chest to wake him. 
This energetic treatment brought him suf- 
ficiently to himself to be able to articulate 
for water. But when the glass was put to 
his lips he bit it to pieces in his frenzied 
efforts to drink. By good luck he neither 
cut himself nor swallowed any of the pieces. 

After his senses had fully returned and 
his arms had been well kneaded, we carried 
him out upon the veranda, his legs still rigid 
in catalepsy. There they had to be violently 
rubbed and jerked info a natural state again. 
His pulse had been eighty-four at the time 
when he began upon his incantation ; it was 
one hundred and twenty as he came to him- 
self again. 

When sufficiently recovered he went and 
bathed, and on returning, his first question 
was whether he had spoken in the trance. 
On being told that he had not uttered a 
syllable, he was much chagrined. He had 
hoped, he said, to have astounded us by 
speaking English when possessed, a tongue 



JNCARNA TIONS. 1 45 

of which, in his normal state, he knew no- 
thing. That he might be permitted to do so 
had been his petition as exorcist. Such su- 
pernatural powers, he assured us, were often 
vouchsafed by the gods ; and he mentioned 
an Englishman (the only trace I have come 
across of a previous foreigner in this other- 
world) who had been thus possessed twenty 
years before in Kobe, and who, though 
knowing no Japanese in his natural state, 
spoke it fluently in the trance. A parallel 
to this is to be found in the illiterate ser- 
ving-girl of the German professor, who, in the 
hypnotic trance, astounded the bystanders 
by repeating whole pages of Greek, which, 
it turned out, she must unconsciously have 
learned from simply hearing her master read 
Greek plays aloud, while she casually came 
in and out to tend his fire. 

I will next present a function with the full 
force of the dramatis persona. It also was 
performed in my own house, by the Mi- 
Kagura-kd, or August Dancing Pilgrim Club. 
There were eight performers, the parts of 
maeza, nakaza, the four shit en, the deputy 
maeza, and the clerk of court, being taken 
respectively by a plasterer, a lumber dealer, 



I46 OCCULT JAPAN. 

a rice shopman, a carpenter, a pawnbroker, a 
pattern designer, a fishmonger, and a maker 
of mizuhiki, those red and white paper strings 
with which the Japanese tie bow-knots about 
their gifts. Quite a representative board of 
trade, in fact. The plasterer was the presi- 
dent of the club, and the pawnbroker its 
treasurer. This last combination was a mere 
coincidence, the man's earthly calling not 
being, so I was informed, any special recom- 
mendation to his heavenly office. 

On the day appointed they turned up, more 
yapanico, pre-punctually. A polite, but at 
first aggravating national custom, this ap- 
pearance of a guest considerably before the 
time for which he was invited. They came 
in detachments, the baggage leading, with 
the president and clerk. It was at once set 
up in scene, together with several other 
properties provided by me beforehand at 
the request of the club. The list of the 
latter articles was the better part of a foot 
long, and footed up to exactly thirty-one 
cents and a third. 

A picture of Kuni-to-ko-dachi-no-mikoto, 
the great god of Ontake, suitably pedestaled 
upon the mountain and flanked by his fol- 



INCARNA TIONS. 147 

lowers, was suspended in the recess, in front 
of which stood a gohei, bosomed in sprigs of 
Shinto's sacred tree, the dark green gloss 
of the leaves bringing out vividly the white 
paper flounces of the symbol of the god. On 
either side of it stood a candle speared upon 
its candlestick. A modest repast of salt and 
raw rice lay below, and flanking it a sake 
bottle not innocent of real sake. In front of 
the feast, in a pair of saucers, two tiny wicks 
floating in rape-seed oil made holy twinkles 
of light. 

In the middle of the sacred space, duly 
inclosed by a frieze of pendent gohei, was 
built the symbolic primeval house of in- 
cense sticks. The place was then purified 
by prayer, by striking of sparks from a flint 
and steel, and by air-dusting with the gohei 
at each of the four corners, after which the 
eight offtciators severally left for the bath- 
room to bathe, and returned one after the 
other clad in the pilgrim dress. The bath- 
ing, though in this case privately done, is 
often publicly performed. On the occasion 
of a fire-crossing (hi-watari), I have seen the 
holy performers strip and bathe quite natu- 
rally at a convenient well, in the face of the 



I48 OCCULT JAPAN. 

waiting populace of men, women, and chil- 
dren. 

When the last man was back again before 
the altar, the eight launched in a body swing- 
ingly upon one of the purification prayers, 
the maeza as usual leading off. Exceedingly 
impressive these purification prayers are, if 
one will but devoutly refrain from under- 
standing them. I had some of them trans- 
lated, and am a wiser and sadder man in 
consequence. 

As the chant swelled it sounded like, and 
yet unlike, some fine processional of the 
church of Rome. And as it rolled along it 
touched a chord that waked again the vision 
of the mountain, and once more before me 
rose Ontake, and I saw the long file of pil- 
grims tramping steadily up the slope. 

Intoned in monotone, it was pointed with 
pantomime, those strange digital contortions, 
the finger-twists. I suppose to one looking 
on for the first time nothing about the func- 
tion would seem so far out of all his world 
as these same finger-charms. The semi- 
suppressed vehemence with which the knots 
are tied, the uncanny look of the knots them- 
selves, and the strange self-abandonment of 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 49 

the performer to the act, produce an effect 
that is weird in the extreme. Symbolic of 
bodily action, the force of the originals is felt 
in these their effigies. A whole drama takes 
place in them, done by a true magician, as 
he bids the devils avaunt and calls the good 
spirits to his aid ; and so realistic are the 
signs, the beings to whom they are ad- 
dressed grow real, too. Like a talk at a 
telephone, the half that is heard conjures 
up of itself the half that is inaudible. And 
their uncanniness clothes these conjurings 
with the character of the supernatural. You 
almost think to see both the devils and the 
gods. 

About them there is a compelling fasci- 
nation in spite of their repellent uncouth- 
ness. If one seek to unravel his sensation 
from the mesh in which it lies caught, he 
will find the charm of the thing to consist, 
I think, in energetic rhythm. For it has 
something of the cadence of a dance ; yet, 
unlike a dance, it is not pleasing in itself. 
It is indeed the height of inartistic art ; its 
very uncouthness has a certain grace, the 
grace of the ungraceful masterfully done. 

If such be the force of the charm acting 



150 OCCULT JAPAN. 

quite simply upon the dispassionate, how 
great its hold upon the believer, set as it 
is by the mordant of faith ! And then, as 
chant and charm roll on in their swift pro- 
cessional, suddenly the brass-ringed crosiers 
{shakujo) ring together in double time, join- 
ing with it their jingle as of passing bells. 

Prayer after prayer followed thus in purifi- 
cation. Each in turn rose, swelled, and sank 
only to rise again, in long billows of sound, 
buoying one's senses to sensations as of the 
sea, indefinitely vast. Crest after crest swept 
thus over thought, drowning all reflection 
in a fathomless feeling of its own. One felt 
quite contentedly full of nothing at all ; in 
that semi-ecstatic state when discrimination 
has lapsed into a supreme sense of satisfac- 
tion ; when the charms seemed as enchanting 
as the chant, and the chant as charming as 
the charms. The portal this to the seventh 
heaven of vacuous content. 

A lull like a loud noise broke in upon our 
half-dream when the maeza stopped to light 
the pyre. As the flame leaped ceilingward 
the chant rose with it, the one carrying the 
other up with it. Tongues of flame three 
feet high darted ceilingward to transform 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 5 1 

themselves suddenly into clouds of opal 
smoke, that, surging, floated off, and then 
slowly settled down. Through the flame the 
maeza passed the written sheets emblematic 
of disease ; passed them as usual to and fro 
unharmed ; till, letting each stay still a mo- 
ment there, it caught and was carried up 
into the crannies of the room. Many ills of 
life thus vanished into thin air. 

Other things were likewise passed through 
the flame to gain like virtue ; each man thus 
purified his rosary, with which he afterward 
rubbed what part of his body he wished to 
be pure and strong ; and finally the gohei 
itself, for quintessence of purification, was 
taken from the altar, purified by the fire, and 
put back in place. 

This finished the first service. The in- 
cense altar was then removed, sheets of pa- 
per were spread on the mats in its stead, and 
the gokei-wznd was taken from the shrine 
and set upright in the midst. Plain pa- 
per ! plain pine-wood ! plain pilgrim dresses ! 
Truly the neutral tints of self-effacement as 
near nothing as symbols can well show ; the 
very apotheosis of vacancy. 

All the performers except the nakaza 



152 OCCULT JAPAN. 

now took post for the possession, seating 
themselves in the prescribed places, facing 
the gohei ; the maeza directly in front of 
it, the "four heavens" {skiten) at the car- 
dinal points on the side, and the clerk and 
the deputy maeza flanking the maeza to the 
left and right. 

After a short incantation the maeza re- 
moved the wand and gave it to the toko, 
the " eastern heaven," who held it ready 
in his hand. The nakaza came forward and 
solemnly seated himself where the gokei had 
been, facing from the altar. Folding his 
legs under him, he drew his robe carefully 
round them, and tied the ends of it to- 
gether as one would a bundle-handkerchief. 
The result gave him the look of certain 
rubber toys of one's extreme childhood, 
that began as a man and ended in a bulb. 
After he had thus arranged himself the 
others did the same. 

For such is the conventional Ry5bu-Shinto 
attitude during possession. Whether this by 
no means easy pose is modeled after that of 
the contemplative Buddha, or is merely the 
exalted seat of old Japan, is doubtful. The 
two differ in certain technical details of the 



INCARNATIONS. 153 

knot that one ties in one's legs, and the knot 
is sometimes of the one kind and sometimes 
of the other. The tying is done to tether 
the possessed that he may not prove too 
violent in the trance. For, as may be im- 
agined, the pose is one from which it is next 
to impossible to rise. Nevertheless, I have 
seen a god hop round on this his pedestal 
with astounding agility. 

After a little private finger-twisting and 
prayer, the nakaza folded his hands before 
him and closed his eyes, the others of course 
incanting. The maeza took the wand from 
the toho and put it between the nakaza 's 
hands. The man at once fell slowly for- 
ward on it, resting one end on the mat and 
the other against his forehead, near the hol- 
low at the base of the nose. 

The others took up in chorus the stirring 
processional chant known as the rokkon shojo 
?to harai. As the measured cadence rolled 
on, suddenly the wand began to quiver; 
and the chant increased in energy. Mo- 
ment by moment the wand gathered motion 
by fits and lulls, as when a storm gathers 
out of a clear sky. Slowly, as it shook, it 
rose till it reached his forehead. The par- 



154 OCCULT JAPAN. 

oxysm came on and then the wand settled 
with a jerk to a rigid half-arm holding be- 
fore his brow, a suppressed quiver alone still 
thrilling it through. The god had come. 

The maeza leaned forward, bent low before 
the outstretched gohei, and reverently asked 
the god's name. The eyes of the possessed 
had already opened to the glassy stare typi- 
cal of trances, the eyeballs so rolled back 
that the pupils were nearly out of sight. In 
an unnatural, yet not exactly artificial voice, 
the god replied, "Matsuwo," at which the 
maeza bowed low again, and then asked what 
questions he had previously inquired of me 
my preference to have put. They were 
about the health of those beyond the sea, 
and prognostications for my approaching 
voyage. All of which were answered with 
Delphic oracularity; after which the god 
spoke on of his own accord. He spoke to 
the maeza, but at me ; he wished to thank 
me, he said, for making the ascent of the 
mountain (Ontake) two years before. At 
which divine encomium, considering that 
the pious are convinced that no foreigner 
may scale the sacred peak and return alive, 
I was proportionately pleased. 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 5 5 

After delivering himself of this politeness 
he settled forward heavily into a lethargic 
swoon. From it he was roused by further 
incantation to fresh fury. Slowly raising 
the wand, he suddenly beat the air above 
his head, and proceeded to hop excitedly 
round on his folded legs, stopping at each 
of the four compass points to repeat his 
performance. Then he came back to his 
previous commanding pose, and, in reply to 
the maeza, spoke again. 

Once more he relapsed into his lethargy, 
and once more he was roused, and answered. 

When he had fallen into his comatose con- 
dition for the third time, the maeza, after a 
sort of benedicite, made the sign of a San- 
skrit character on his back, and slapped him 
energetically on top of it. One of the four 
" sides " stood by ready with a cup of water, 
and, the moment he had come to enough, 
put it to his lips and helped him to drink. 
Under this treatment he gradually revived, 
but it took some kneading before the wand 
could be loosed from his cataleptic grip. 

Three gods, it appeared, had come in turn, 
which accounted for the rise and fall in the 
character of the possession : Matsuwo Sama, 



156 OCCULT JAPAN. 

or O-yama-zumi-no-mikoto, Fukan Gy5ja, and 
Hakkai San. 

The last example of the Ryobu form shall 
be one typical of the average unpretentious 
trance, the participants being all simple- 
minded farmers of the suburbs of Tokyo. 
There were five of them, all members of the 
Five Cardinal Virtues Pilgrim Club. The 
shrine was the simplest possible, and so 
was the banquet offered the god. No pic- 
ture was hung in the recess, and the pyre 
was not elaborate. 

The maeza and nakaza had both been up 
Ontake more than once ; the other three 
were as yet ascensionless, but hopeful the 
lot to go might soon fall upon them, their 
finances having up to date only permitted 
them to travel so far in fancy. 

Purification prayers and purification songs 
— the misogi no harai, the rokkon shojo no 
karai, and the nakatomi no harai — were duly 
intoned, the nakaza in this case being spe- 
cially active, because otherwise the leading 
spirit of the company. All five were clad in 
their Ontake ascension robes, although the 
greater number were simply, as has been 
said, piously anticipating that event. 



INCARNA TIONS. I 5 7 

The possession itself took place with open 
eyes, and was interesting only for the rise 
and fall of its crises. The wand shook fren- 
ziedly, settled before the man's face, the god 
spoke, and then with an agaru, " I ascend," 
the man fell forward collapsed. The incan- 
tation began again, and a second god came 
down. Five several times this cycle was 
gone through before the possession was 
brought to a close and the man waked up. 
Five separate gods had come in turn. 

VI. 

The Buddhist trances introduce a new fea- 
ture in the shape of femininity. For in the 
Buddhist variety of these divine possessions 
the god shows a preference for feminine lips. 

The first one I was shown was a posses- 
sion by the Nichiren sect. This is a sect of 
purely Japanese origin, having been founded 
by Nichiren, who had learned much of the 
Shinto priests six hundred years ago, — a 
sect with no prototype or affiliations else- 
where. It is the Buddhist sect that now 
chiefly affects possession. In this instance 
the mouthpiece of the god was the mouth of 
a maiden, and the man who parleyed with 



I 5 8 OCCUL T JAPAN-. 

her a mouse-like priest of a certain not un- 
popular temple. 

It too was a parlor possession in my own 
house, and I have since learned that in con- 
sequence of the temple company having 
been thus invited out to perform, the fame 
of the temple has gone abroad and its holy 
trade has amazingly increased. 

There were three persons in the company. 
For with the priest and the maiden, who was 
about eighteen, came a female friend of 
maturer years, not indeed to chaperone the 
fair one so soon to be more than metaphor- 
ically divine, but merely to assist at the di- 
vine audience. The three all belonged to a 
certain pilgrim club of which the priest was 
president. 

They appeared with an extra jinrikisha 
carrying a Saratoga trunk of indispensables. 
To be fair to the sex, as it shows itself in 
Japan, it should instantly be said that in 
this case the baggage was not chargeable to 
it but to the god's delight in pageantry, as 
interpreted by the Nichiren sect. The trunk 
proved to contain several candles, some sa- 
kaki y a gohei, two large lumps of rice-paste 
known as kagamimochiy or mirror-dough, va- 



INCARNA TIONS. I 5 9 

rious other objects of bigotry and virtue, 
eight volumes of scripture, vestments, rosary, 
and ecclesiastical trappings for the priest. 
He, and not the women, was the object to be 
arrayed ; they, poor things, remained mod- 
estly clad in dull indigo blue. 

After all these articles had been unpacked 
and the priest had made a shrine of some of 
them and had put on the rest, he faced the 
altar and began to pray. He prayed a long 
time, an elaborate and beautiful chant in 
keeping with his clothes. A regrettable ab- 
sence of finger-charms was made up for by 
the ingenious way in which he managed to 
read through the whole eight volumes of 
scripture. For want of a more consecrated 
expression it may be known as the way of 
the concertina, and is as useful as it is ar- 
tistic. It was made possible by the mode 
of binding the books. Like old Japanese 
books generally, each consisted of a single 
piece about fifteen yards long, folded for the 
sake of portability into pages, the ends only 
being fastened to the covers. Holding them 
farther apart at the top than at the bottom, 
he let the pages slowly cascade from his 
left hand into his right, accompanying him- 



l60 OCCULT JAPAN. 

self thus on the holy harmonicon to the 
chanting of a portion of its contents by 
heart. The fair ones chorused him at a re- 
spectful distance in the rear. 

After thus adroitly disposing of his chief 
devoir, the priest repeated several remem- 
bered prayers, not on his rosary, but, as it 
were, to it. For in the possession ceremony 
the Japanese Buddhist uses his rosary not as 
tally to his prayer, but as musical accom- 
paniment to it. As he prays he soothingly 
strokes it, and it purrs with the gratified 
responsiveness of a cat. 

All this lasted a long while, but the sights 
and the sounds beguiled the senses to the 
forgetting of time. When the priest had 
prayed, in all conscience, enough, he turned 
at right angles to his former position, and 
beckoned to the maiden to approach and 
seat herself opposite to and facing him, side- 
ways, therefore, to the altar. She then 
folded her hands and closed her eyes. 

First he sprinkled her all over with a 
shower-bath of sparks from a flint and steel ; 
after which he repeated in a soporific way 
several monotonic chants, and watched the 
effect. When he judged her numb enough 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 6 1 

he put the go/iez-wa.nd into her hands and 
continued intoning, his own hands making 
musical monotone meanwhile on his amber 
rosary. 

Possession came on gradually ; the gohei 
behaving in a becomingly lady-like way, but 
otherwise as usual. It slowly rose to her 
forehead, and on reaching it began to shiver. 
The maiden's eyes stayed closed. 

The priest then asked what questions I 
would like to put to the god. Some doc- 
trinal points occurred to me, the priest acting 
as spokesman. The god and the priest were 
pleased with the answers ; I was not, their 
conventionality veiled in vagueness failing 
to commend itself. Then the god indulged 
in some gratuitous prophecy, not subse- 
quently fulfilled. He kindly foretold that a 
week after my return to America I should 
lose a large amount of money I had loaned. 
I thanked him for this information, thinking 
it unnecessary to inform him that I had no 
money out on loan at the moment, which is 
perhaps why I never lost it. But I realize 
that the fault was mine. Had I been a 
Japanese the chances are overwhelming that 
most of my property would have been lent ; 



1 62 OCCULT JAPAN. 

and in that case I should undoubtedly have 
lost it. This is about as near as I ever came 
with the gods to successful prophecy. And 
yet to divine would seem to be of the very 
essence of divinity. 

Altogether the most interesting feature 
of the case, psychologically, was the great 
ease of possession, due, as I am convinced, 
to the sex of the subject. In possessions by 
the Nichiren sect the god prefers women 
for embodiment ; the only exception being 
the occasional employment of children as 
divine subjects. For in this sect men are 
never possessed. 

At another seance by the same sect, four 
priests and a woman took part. There were 
no fmger-twistings, and the service gener- 
ally was short and simple. A hanging scroll 
of Kishibojin was suspended in the recess 
of honor ; while below it a small altar, over- 
laid with rich brocade, stood flanked by two 
gokei-vjandiS. The principal priest put on 
white silk robes, and the woman a white 
cotton surplice. At first she sat disinterest- 
edly to one side. 

At the close of the preliminary service 
the chief officiator beckoned to her to take 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 63 

her seat ; this she did, passing through the 
row of priests with the customary respectful 
symbolic scooping of the hand, and sat down 
in the midst with her back to the altar. She 
closed her eyes ; the priest made the sign of 
a Sanskrit character on each of her palms, 
and then, taking the two go/iez-w ands, put 
one into each of her hands. This duality of 
divine descent was the most interesting 
feature of the affair. Twitching ensued al- 
most instantly, and was kept up a long time 
while the officiator (sJiugenjd) prayed on. At 
the close of it the priest asked the god's 
name, and then interviewed him. Then, 
after permission had been asked by the 
priest, the god condescended to interviews 
with the rest of us. Replies would have been 
made in any case, the priest said, but it 
would have been rude to the god not to have 
first obtained his consent. The subject was 
quite insensible to pins stuck into her neck, 
but objected at first to having her pulse felt, 
pulling her arm away as if annoyed, till she 
had been assured that it was all right by the 
priest. Her pulse proved a trifle faster than 
in her normal state (no as against ioo), but 
decidedly weaker. 



164 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Although this is my first mention of pins, 
I hasten to add that I had already tried 
them with like innocuous result upon the 
sterner sex, and I desire to add in self-de- 
fense that it was the god, not the woman, 
that was pricked. 

After speaking, the subject lapsed into a 
comatose condition, but could be roused by 
being addressed. When the priest had fin- 
ished with her he took the wands from her 
hands, not without difficulty, they were so 
cataleptically clenched, and somewhat irrev- 
erently rolled her over on her side, like a 
doll, into a corner, where he left her to wake, 
while he and the others finished the service. 
By the time they were done she came to of 
herself. 

The facing of the possessed — from the 
altar or simply sideways to it — is a matter 
dependent on the particular priest and upon 
the character of the god expected to de- 
scend. If the god be of more importance 
he sits ex cathedra as it were ; if not, simply 
ex parte. This relative disrespect shown by 
the Buddhists to the possessing gods will be 
discussed later. 

Such are the phenomena of god-possession 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 65 

as practiced by the Nichiren sect. The 
Shingon sect indulges in a somewhat similar 
cult, of which I have been told by its priests, 
but which I do not happen to have seen. The 
Tendai practices the cult but little, the other 
sects do not practice it at all. These defi- 
nite possessions must be carefully distin- 
guished from Buddhist meditation, which 
also eventually lapses into trance. The first 
may be defined as a change of one's person- 
ality into another's ; the second as the ethe- 
realization of one's own. In Japan the Zen 
sect are the greatest adepts in thus losing 
themselves. Meditating one's self into pro- 
toplasmic purity is a specialty of the Bud- 
dhists consequent upon the essential tenets 
of their religion, and has only a distant kin- 
ship in common with the purely Japanese 
Buddhist trances I have described. 

VII. 

Oldest of all and yet youngest of any of 
the Japanese possessions are the pure Shinto 
ones. For they took place in the far past, 
and then did not take place again till the 
other day. They form the most interesting 
branch of the family, because the most un- 
conventional members of it. 



1 66 OCCULT JAPAN. 

In virtue of being a part of pure Shinto 
they are necessarily resurrections ; although 
reckless believers now insist that they were 
always practiced in secret during Shinto's 
unfortunate unpopularity. If this be really 
the case, it is a sad instance of keeping a 
secret too well. For there is no mention 
made of them during the middle ages. But 
in a sense they never lapsed. For they sur- 
vived in Ryobu — from whose destruction 
they have phoenix-like emerged, as faithful 
reproductions of the prehistoric practices as 
is possible. Being biblical in character, they 
are invested with a certain archaism that 
imparts to them all the more seeming sanc- 
tity. 

The personal auxiliary rites are few and 
simple ; such being explained away on the 
score of purity. The pure Shint5ists are so 
pure, so they themselves say, that they do 
not need them. The striking parallelism of 
this to the Shinto explanation of its lack of 
a moral code — that only immoral people 
need moral laws — is instructive. Neverthe- 
less it is quite true that the more faith the 
less formulae. 

The finger - charms, decidedly the most 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 67 

weird of the Ryobu rites, are reduced to 
such very low terms as hardly to appear. Of 
purification prayers only those of pure Shinto 
origin are recited. Those of Ryobu fabri- 
cation, such as the rokkon shojo no harai, 
being carefully ignored. 

On the other hand, the impersonal part of 
the service is elaborate. It has all the for- 
mality of the usual state function, for it is 
nothing more nor less than a divine ban- 
quet, with the god himself for after-dinner 
speaker. The dinner is all-essential' to the 
affair, as it is to all Shinto rites. For the 
Shinto practice of dining its deities is not 
confined to the ceremony of possession. 
Wherever the gods are invoked, for any 
cause whatsoever, they are induced to de- 
scend by the prospect of a dinner. A repast 
stands perpetually prepared on all Shinto 
altars ; shrines being, to put it irreverently, 
free-lunch counters for deity, while every 
Shinto service is but a special banquet given 
some particular god. One comes to conceive 
of a Shint5 god's life as one continuous 
round of dining out. To induce an after- 
dinner mood in a god whom one wishes to 
propitiate is doubtless judicious. 



1 68 OCCULT JAPAN. 

The rite is, of course, the apotheosis of 
primitive hospitality. With civilization, how- 
ever, the divine dinner has, like mere mortal 
ones, taken on a most tedious etiquette. It 
consists now of six or seven courses, each 
of which is ceremoniously long in the serving. 
The priests, who are the waiters, are all most 
beautifully dressed, and stand drawn up in a 
properly impressive row. After a sort of 
grace, said by the chief officiator, the priest 
at the lower end of the line hands in, from 
the refectory behind the scenes, the first of 
the holy platters, which, with a long, deep 
bow, he passes up to the next man in the 
line, who passes it to the third, and so on 
till it reaches the chief priest, who places it 
reverently upon the altar. Each dish is thus 
solemnly offered up to the god and deposited 
upon the shrine in turn. The dishes consist 
of almost everything edible, and, considering 
that much of the food is raw, of everything 
inedible as well. Wine especially is always 
on the table, for the gods are anything but 
teetotalers. 

So far as records and traditions make it 
possible, the aboriginal cult is reinstated. 
Even the archaic instruments of miscalled 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 69 

music, actual heirlooms, some of them, it is 
said, in the high-priest's family, are played 
upon by their modern descendant as they 
were by his mythologic forbears, that the 
unchangeable gods may still be pleased. In 
fact, the whole action is as nearly as possi- 
ble as it would appear could one be trans- 
ported a couple of millenniums into the past. 
The trance itself is likewise different from 
its Ryobu relative. It is more natural and 
more free. The possessed is not fettered to 
the conventionality of the Ryobu forms. He 
sits, stands, speaks more spontaneously, and 
generally behaves himself with more of the 
self-prompting a god might be expected to 
possess. This, however, is in the believer's 
eyes of less consequence than the knowledge 
of the scriptures he displays. In proportion 
as he is able to elucidate the meagre accounts 
in the Shinto bibles, does he prove his supe- 
rior divinity. That the subject has been 
well trained in this old folk-lore, does not, to 
the pious, constitute a propter hoc in the 
matter. 



170 OCCULT JAPAN. 

VIII. 

Perhaps the most curious phenomenon of 
the pure Shint5 possession-cult is the Kwan- 
cho's kindergarten. This is a Sunday-school 
of a unique kind, held by the high-priest of 
the Shinshiu sect every other week-day 
throughout the year, vacations excepted. The 
instruction is eminently practical, for it con- 
sists in teaching nothing less than the art 
of temporarily becoming god. It is the most 
esoteric of all the possession practices. To 
its exercises I was never permitted to bring 
another foreigner, my own purity just suf- 
ficing to admit me. 

The school is composed of two classes, a 
boys' class and a girls' class, made up of the 
most pious young people of the parish. The 
boys' class is held first. The pupils begin 
by taking post in a row at the farther end 
of the main temple room, while the high- 
priest faces the altar and conducts a service 
in which the pupils join. Then he seats him- 
self on one side and nods to a boy to come for- 
ward. The boy advances, squats in a divine 
attitude before the altar, and closes his eyes. 
After some subdued prayer the priest rises, 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 7 1 

puts the go/tei-wa.nd into the boy's hands, 
and, resuming his seat, plays sweetly on the< 
sacred flute, exactly as you shall read of its 
being done in the Kojiki ; which is not a sur- 
prising coincidence, since the action is copied 
from it. On advanced pupils the effect is 
almost instantaneous. The boy goes into 
convulsions, raises the gohei to arms' length 
above his head, brandishes it maniacally in 
the air, and while still doing so rises to his 
feet and proceeds to dance madly about the 
room. In the course of his divine antics he 
contrives to part with the go/iei-wand, which 
he hurls inadvertently into a corner. He 
then enters upon several gymnastic exer- 
cises. First he turns somersaults promis- 
cuously all over the floor. Then a low table 
is brought out by some of the other pupils 
and set in the middle of the room, and over 
this, directed by taps on it from the Kwan- 
cho, the possessed somersaults in every pos- 
sible direction, following in a definite order 
the compass points. The table is then turned 
on its side, and he repeats his series of 
tumbles. The same is next done with the 
table turned bottom side up ; and so forth 
and so on in pretty much every other position 



172 OCCULT JAPAN. 

of the furniture. A pupil will sometimes 
turn thus some seventy somersaults in the 
the course of one trance. Against the wall 
stands a ladder, up which the entranced 
next climbs to the cornice, clinging to which 
he makes the circuit of the room. Not in- 
frequently he wanders by the same means 
round all the neighboring apartments. After 
descending again by the ladder, he performs 
upon a horizontal bar. 

Or he stands on his head up against the 
wall, first in one corner of the room, and 
then in another, until he has made the circuit 
of it, interpolating between times somersaults 
at his own sweet will. The curriculum varies 
with the pupil. Though of the same general 
character for all, it differs in detail for each. 
But each pupil repeats his own performance 
exactly, night after night, improving on it 
through a gradual course of trance-develop- 
ment. 

With the girls the action is fittingly less 
violent. They do not journey along the cor- 
nice, but they do turn somersaults over the 
floor. Their specialty, however, consists in 
dancing dervish-like round and round the 
room. The waltzing they keep up indefi- 
nitely until stopped by the priest. 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 7 3 

All these actions of the pupil mean some- 
thing. The dance is the facsimile of the one 
that the goddess Uzume-no-mikoto performed 
in the first recorded possession. Somersault- 
ing over the floor represents the natural rev- 
olution of all things ; while somersaulting 
over the table denotes visits paid to the 
upper and the under world. Standing on 
one's head in the corner with one's legs 
straight up against the wall implies posses- 
sion by the spirit of a climbing plant. 

Before one pupil has finished, a second is 
started on his career, and then sometimes a 
third, which, considering the violence of their 
actions, very decidedly peoples the apart- 
ment. The girls are as decent as dervishes, 
but as to the boys, dancing dervishes are 
orderly, intelligent members of society by 
comparison. It is irresponsibility let loose. 
For they hurl themselves about the apart- 
ment with as utter a disregard of others as of 
themselves. Yet, though they often collide, 
they seem to regard each other as strictly 
inanimate things. 

Though it is doubtful if they see at all, it 
is certain that they can hear the Kwancho, 
who occasionally warns them to be careful, 



174 OCCULT JAPAN. 

With the exception of thus occasionally ad- 
dressing them and of tapping the table or 
the wall, he does not direct their movements 
in the least. Such half-way stage between 
hypnotic and possessed action is an interest- 
ing thing in itself. 

The subject's pulse is accelerated and 
weakened, so far as I could discover by feel- 
ing it immediately afterward. 

Though adepts quickly fall into the state, 
it takes practice to attain to pious profi- 
ciency, several sittings being necessary be- 
fore the pupil is possessed at all. 

IX. 

We now come to the subjective side of the 
trance, the first point being the getting into 
it ; the cause, that is, as distinguished from 
its occasion. Entrance is effected, in fact, 
in the simplest possible manner. It consists 
in shutting the eyes and thinking of nothing. 
From the moment the nakaza takes the 
gohei-vf&nd. into his hands, at which time it 
will be remembered he closes his eyes, he 
makes his mind as much of a blank as he can. 

The ability to think of nothing — not the 
simple matter even to the innately empty- 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 7 5 

headed it might be imagined — has been 
increased by the previous etherealizing pro- 
cess of the austerities. The routine ritual 
indulged in just prior to the act, or rather 
the non-act, furthers this pious result. The 
repeating of the purification prayers has be- 
come so purely mechanical a process that 
saying them is tantamount to not thinking. 
Nakaza, quite unmindful of the doubtful pro- 
priety of the remark, have informed me that 
the two are the same thing. They do not 
think of anything, they say, after they have 
once sat down to the ceremony, though they 
are, patently, as busy as they can be reeling 
off the prayers. So true is this that a nakaza 
will at times begin to go off inopportunely in 
the midst of the preliminary rites and have to 
be brought back from his divine digression 
by a rousing cuff from the maeza. 

Some nakaza, in order the easier to enter 
the trance, rest one end of the ^o/iei-wsmd 
upon the ground, and, leaning forward, throw 
their weight upon the other, pressed against 
the forehead at the base of the nose be- 
tween the eyes. The act is thought to be 
helpful to a speedy possession. It is an in- 
teresting fact that this zone hypnotique 



175 OCCULT JAPAN. 

should have been discovered experimentally 
by the Japanese long before the thing was 
scientifically known to Europe. Not all sub- 
jects, however, make use of it. Some simply 
rest one end of the wand on the floor and 
then lean upon it ; some do not even rest it 
on the floor, but hold it before them in the 
air. These various devices are matter of tra- 
ditional practice with particular pilgrim clubs. 

Easy as vacuity gets to be to those who 
can give their whole mind to it, the acqui- 
sition of such capacity is by no means an 
instantaneous affair, as the history of one 
earnest applicant for inanity from his first 
failure to his first success will suffice to 
show. 

After having duly reduced himself by pro- 
tracted austerities to sufficient abstraction, 
he was set one evening in the nakazds seat. 
Ranged round him sat the regular company 
incanting. He closed his eyes and the gohei- 
wand was put into his hands. From that 
moment he tried to make his mind as blank 
as possible. The result the first evening was 
simple nausea. It is not, perhaps, to be won- 
dered at, that his first dose of divinity should 
disagree with a man. 



INCARNATIONS. IJJ 

The man's second attempt the following 
evening led to a like sickening result, but 
the unpleasant effect was a thought less 
acute. So it was on the third evening and 
the fourth, and in this half-seas-over state 
between man and god he continued to re- 
main for fifteen consecutive nights, the nau- 
sea less at each repetition of its cause. At 
last, at the fifteenth sitting, his perseverance 
was rewarded. He entered the holy ring as 
usual and remembers hearing the others 
repeating the prayers fainter and yet more 
faint, like singers departing into the dis- 
tance, and then he was aware of being rudely 
and irrelevantly shaken by the rest. They 
were bringing him to. Possession had been 
like the unconscious dropping off to sleep ; 
coming to himself again like waking in the 
morning, only that he felt dull and tired. 
He was told by the company that he had 
nodded, brandished the wand, and become 
perfectly rigid. 

Subjects, when catechized more curiously 
as to the feeling of lapsing into the trance, 
indulged in variously opposite analogies. 
One likened it to the sensation that creeps 
over a man after long immersion in the hon* 



I78 OCCULT JAPAN. 

orable hot water, a luxurious soaking in a 
bath of the parboiling temperature of one 
hundred and ten degrees or more Fahrenheit ; 
a simile by some degrees too ardent to con- 
vey much idea of insensibility to Europeans, 
but which commends itself as expressive to 
Japanese. Another individual said it felt 
like going up in a balloon. This daringly 
inflated simile turned out a pure flight of 
fancy, as on further questioning it appeared 
that the speaker had never been up in one. 
But, inasmuch as his audience had not either, 
his definition was considerably more definite 
than if he had made ever so many ascents. 
A third man averred that it was like being 
drowned and then being brought to life 
again ; a clever hit, this, though I have no 
reason to suppose that he had had, any 
more than the other, personal experience of 
his comparison. Still another described all 
sounds as seeming to go a long way off ; 
while a last adept said that when he lapsed 
into the supreme of meditation, a condition 
akin to that of being possessed, ordinary 
noises ceased to be audible, and yet in win- 
ter he could hear the water freeze. 

Of the trance itself most, if not all, of the 



INCARNATIONS. 1 79 

possessed remember afterwards nothing. 
One man indeed said that it was like dream- 
ing, only more vague, — the dream of a 
dream, which certainly is very vague, indeed. 
Even here I think he mistook the feelings 
fringing the trance state for the trance state 
itself. For certainly the average good na- 
kaza is quite emphatic on the point, and this 
particular man was not a specially able spe- 
cimen. 

All agree in the sense of oppression which 
is their last bit of consciousness before going 
off and their first on coming to. It is for 
this the maeza slaps the nakaza repeatedly 
on the back at and after the moment of wak- 
ing. The throat is so throttled that unless 
this were done the water could not be swal- 
lowed. As for the water itself, it is taken 
for much the same reason that some people 
take it when about to swallow a pill, to over- 
come, that is, the involuntary contraction of 
the glottis. 

Possession begins, they, say, at the gohei. 
The hands that hold it are the first parts of 
the man to be possessed. In the incipient 
cases they are all that are visibly affected. 
As the control deepens the cataleptic condi- 



180 OCCULT JAPAN. 

tion creeps, on like paralysis, till it involves 
all of the body not actually in use by the 
god. 

Possession ends much as it begins. The 
subject's arms and hands are the last part of 
him to lose their induced catalepsy. After 
the man is well waked and to all intents and 
purposes himself again, it is difficult to take 
the wand away from him. Only after being 
rubbed and kneaded will the fingers let go 
their hold. 

In the trance itself the anaesthesia is usu- 
ally marked. I have repeatedly stuck pins 
into the entranced at favorably sensitive 
spots without the god's being aware of the 
pricks. In some cases, however, where I 
had otherwise no reason to suspect fraud, 
the pin was felt. So that apparently want 
of feeling is not invariably produced in the 
state ; but it is certainly a usual concomi- 
tant of it. 

The pulse is quickened to a varying extent. 
This appears to be rather a symptom of the 
entrance into the state than of the trance it- 
self, and is doubtless due to the exertion and 
excitement of the preliminary rites. The 
significant symptom of the actual possession 



INCARNATIONS. . l8l 

is the pulse's very decided weakening. The 
performers themselves state that it stops. 
It comes very near it. I have explored the 
wrist of an entranced during possession for a 
long time only to find an occasional flutter. 
But the most important feature of this failure 
of the pulse consists in the way in which it 
keeps step inversely with the rise in the ac- 
tivity of the possession. The pulse grows 
feeble in proportion as the trance action 
grows strong, and tends to go out completely 
when possession attains its height. When 
the subject falls forward into his comatose 
condition the pulse returns. The perform- 
ers themselves are perfectly aware of this 
reciprocal relation between the man's vitality 
and the god's. When the entranced's pulse 
was being felt I have known a whole com- 
pany to redouble the energy of their incan- 
tation in order thus to keep the possession 
at its height and so cause the pulse to go 
out. 

During the height of the possession the 
subject's body is in constant subdued quiver ; 
evidence of the same nervous thrill that pro- 
duces the initial spasm. Not till the coma- 
tose condition comes on does this cease. 



1 82 OCCULT JAPAN. 

And it is capable of being revived to greater 
or less fury by reincantation, at any moment. 

At the time the subject consigns himself 
to vacating his bodily premises he shuts his 
eyes, thus closing the shutters of the house 
his spirit is so soon to leave ; and the blinds 
stay drawn till the spirit has passed away 
and the coming on of the spasm indicates the 
advent of the god. At his entrance the eye- 
lids are, in some cases, raised again (gambi- 
raki), revealing that glassy stare peculiar to 
the trance ; in others they still remain drawn. 
Which they shall do is matter of tradition in 
the subject's pilgrim club. If the eyes open 
— as also doubtless if they do not — the eye- 
balls are rolled up so that the iris is half out 
of sight ; the lids quiver but never wink. 
By those who open their eyes, the not doing 
so is denounced as conducive to shams. It 
is certainly easier to sham with the eyes 
shut, if indeed the peculiar look of an en- 
tranced's eye can be counterfeited at all. 
Nevertheless, such as shut their eyes to the 
act deem their way equally convincing. 

Beside opening or not-opening his eyes in 
the trance, dependent upon the habit of his 
club, the subsequent action of the possessed 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 8 3 

is otherwise conventional. The behavior of 
one god bears a striking family likeness to 
that of another. Each begins by brandish- 
ing maniacally the go/iei-wand, and after suf- 
ficient flourish brings it down to the com- 
manding holding before the brow which 
betokens that he is ready to be interviewed. 
He is then invariably first asked his name, 
which would seem to be a polite formality, 
since god-experts say they can tell which 
god has come by the manner alone in which 
he brandishes the gokei-wa.n&. Gods are as 
easily told apart as men, when you know 
them. Their general resemblance is due to 
their divinity ; their slight individuality is 
their own. 

The conventional character of the actions 
of the entranced is of course no sign of 
shamming. To mistake such for fraud is to 
be one's own dupe. His actions are but the 
unconscious assimilation of precedent be- 
come stereotyped into trance habit, just as 
artless a thing as any everyday habit. One 
might make a more serious mistake and take 
for necessary symptoms of the Japanese 
trance these mere adventitious adjuncts of it, 
due to auto-suggestion at first and then per- 



1 84 OCCULT JAPAN. 

petuated unintentionally, as the Salpetriere 
did with those it first innocently induced in 
its hypnotic patients, and then as innocently 
marveled at afterward. Some symptoms, 
nevertheless, are quite universal — those 
connected with the goJiei- wand. The way in 
which this is treated is common to pure 
Shinto, Ryobu-Shint5, and Buddhist per- 
formance alike, the action only differing in 
degree. On the other hand, the tying up of 
the legs of the entranced is essentially a 
Ryobu practice, not being a detail of the 
higher forms of pure Shinto possession nor 
of that of the women subjects of the Bud- 
dhists. 

Shamming is not so important a matter as 
it might seem, because of its ease of detec- 
tion. Shams there are in plenty, which is 
scarcely surprising when we consider the 
great vogue the act of possession enjoys. 
But such are easily exploded. An unex- 
pected pin in a tender part of the possessed's 
body instantly does the business. For a 
god is sublimely superior to being made a 
pin-cushion of, while a mere man invariably 
objects to it. The difficulty, indeed, lies not 
in detecting the counterfeit but in failing to 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 8 5 

detect the reality. To a sufficiently incred- 
ulous eye the sham very rarely masquerades 
successfully, while the genuine article, if very 
perfect, often seems too good to be true. 
Especially is this the case with woman. 
One doubts her divinity at the time only to 
realize afterward that he has done the lady 
an injustice. 

Though the god in these incarnations is 
thus born, not made, he has after birth to go 
through a natural process of development to 
reach his full capabilities. 

His gradual self-education would be inter- 
esting to witness did it not take so long. 
The history of a boy about ten and a half 
years old whom I was privileged to observe 
in the course of his divine education will give 
some idea of the laboriousness of the pro- 
cess. He began practicing to be possessed 
on July 17; that is he was then first set in 
the nakazds seat, and the go/iez-wand put into 
his hands while he shut his eyes and tried 
to make his mind as blank as possible. This 
performance he went through five times 
every day from that time on, twice in the 
morning and three times at night. It was 
at the end of August when the god at last 



1 86 OCCULT JAPAN. 

descended and possessed him. At first the 
god did nothing but brandish the gohei- 
wand. Gradually he learned to grunt. When 
I first saw the boy in the latter part of 
September, the god had got far enough 
along to grunt quite imposingly. I saw him 
again on October 28. The sounds had taken 
on some form. He could then articulate so 
that you thought he spoke what it was your 
fault not to understand. By the middle of 
November, I was told, he would speak dis- 
tinctly. 

The development of the voice is always 
an acquired art ; dumb possession preceding 
the ability to converse in the trance. It 
takes the god no inconsiderable time to 
learn to talk. When he does do so the 
tone is peculiar. It is not the man's natu- 
ral voice, but a stilted, cothurnus sort of 
voice, one which a god might be supposed 
to use in addressing mere mortals. It 
would be theatrical were it not sincere. 
It is the man's unconscious conception of 
how a god should talk, and commends itself 
artistically to the imagination. 

The" possessory gods present certain inter- 
esting characteristics. In the first place they 



INCARNA TIONS. 1 8? 

are of either sex. This follows from the fact 
that in Japan sex suffers no social restric- 
tions among the gods, as in olden times it 
suffered none among men. Goddesses are 
both numerous and influential. Practically 
the highest god in the Shinto pantheon is 
a lady, the Sun-Goddess Ama-terasu-o-mi- 
kami. The earth deity worshiped as the 
principal god at the second Ise shrine is 
also a goddess. For in Shinto is realized 
the idea of the advanced woman's right's 
wife, who, on sending her husband shop- 
ping one day to match a piece of ribbon, 
said to him, as a parting injunction, " If you 
are in doubt, pray to God, and She will help 
you." 

Woman continued a power after she had 
ceased to be divine. Japanese history boasts 
of several empresses who, chivalry apart, 
have played on the whole its most promi- 
nent parts. The Empress Jingo is perhaps 
the most striking figure in the imperial line, 
not excluding her son, who was canonized as 
the god of war. 

When it comes to possession it is there- 
fore not surprising that femininity should 
be found to have a hand in it. In the olden 



1 88 OCCULT JAPAN. 

time both possessors and possessees were 
notably of the sex, as we shall see when we 
come to examine the Shinto bibles later. 

Nowadays possession is chiefly confined to 
males on both sides. Still there are plenty 
of exceptions in both parties to the business. 
It is not uncommon for a goddess to descend 
sandwiched in between a lot of gods. In 
such event the voice of the entranced changes 
to suit the sex. The sex of the subject does 
not seem to signify ; goddesses not being 
particularly partial to men, nor particularly 
averse to their own sex. Male deities usu- 
ally descend upon both sexes indifferently, 
simply because they are more numerous 
than female ones. 

Sex, however, is not surprising in divinity. 
But there is one point about these possessory 
gods in which they come much nearer being 
unique, and in which they are certainly not 
specially feminine — in their willingness to 
share their subject. Shinto possessions are 
remarkable for the multiplicity of gods that 
deign to descend in one and the same trance. 
Such divine copartnership is of course suc- 
cessive, since otherwise it would not be per- 
sonal possession at all, but a mere composite 



INCARNATIONS. 1 89 

blur of divinity, quite unrecognizable for any- 
body in particular. The communistic char- 
acter of the possession is as singular as the 
constituents to it are many. Rarely does 
one god monopolize the trance. Usually from 
three to a dozen descend in turn. As each 
descends, the activity of the possession rises 
from lethargy to somnambulistic action ; the 
possessed acts, speaks, is the god. Then, 
when the god departs, he sinks forward into 
a comatose condition from which the next 
god rouses him. Each god stays but five 
minutes or so, and this five-minute rule in 
speaking produces a wave-like rise and fall 
in the character of the possession, by which 
it becomes possible to count the number of 
the divine visitors. 

Contrary to what might be thought prob- 
able, the same god very rarely, if ever, re- 
turns in the same trance. To have come 
once, instead of being reason for coming 
again is reason for the reverse, which cer- 
tainty shows a praiseworthy regard on the 
part of the god not to monopolize his sub- 
ject. 

Although neither the subject nor any one 
else knows beforehand what particular gods 



190 OCCULT JAPAN. 

will descend in any one trance, a certain 
clique of gods usually frequents any one 
man. What the divine set shall be depends 
upon what gods the man is intimate with in 
his normal state. One man's familiar spirits 
will thus consist of the various Inari, gods 
of agriculture ; another's of defunct and dei- 
fied gydja, pious hermits who lived much in 
the mountains, and are particularly famil- 
iar with the peaks ; a third's of the higher 
Shinto divinities. Each is visited by his in- 
timates ; his pious proclivities determining 
with whom he may stand upon calling 
terms. 

Such an impersonal thread of godhead 
upon which each particular god's personality 
is strung, running in this manner through 
the trance, reveals very strikingly the pecul- 
iar characteristic of these people — their 
impersonality. It shows how deep ingrained 
that impersonality is, that after his sense of 
self has entirely left the man, the essential 
quality of that self, its lack of it, still lingers 
behind. It reminds one in a serious way of 
the problem of the sand-bank with the hole 
in it. The sea comes up and washes away 
the sand-bank ; does the hole remain ? Here 



INC A RNA TIONS. 1 9 1 

apparently it does. For though vacuity 
alone is left to be filled by deity, the form 
of that vacuity reappears in the god. The 
mould is still there to shape the new tenant 
after all that was moulded in it has crum- 
bled away. 

So closes my presentation of the pheno- 
mena of this strange possession-cult. Before 
passing on to interpret the noumena behind 
them, there remains to be given some ac- 
count of a custom intimately associated with 
them, the pilgrim clubs. After that prop- 
erly comes the proof of their essentially 
Japanese character. But I cannot take my 
leave of the phenomena themselves without 
hoping there may linger with the reader 
some impression, however faint, of the 
simple beauty of the Shinto faith. For in 
an emotional sense it is the very essence 
of what makes far - eastern life so fine. 
Mere outline of a faith as Shinto at first 
sight seems to be, on closer study it proves 
to be something little less than grand 
in its very simplicity. Truly it needs no 
formal priesthood, no elaborate service, no 
costly shrine, for it has as visibly about it 
something better than all these — its very 



I92 OCCULT JAPAN. 

gods. To Shinto they are always there ; and 
the great cryptomeria groves no longer seem 
untenanted, the plain, bare buildings no 
longer lack a host ; for at any instant they 
may be pervaded by a presence, the presence 
of the incarnate spirit of the god. 





PILGRIMAGES AND THE PILGRIM 
CLUBS. 




VERY traveler in Japan will have 
been struck by a singular yet well- 
nigh universal appendage to the 
country inn : a motley collection of cloths 
dangling from short fishing-poles stuck into 
the eaves in one long line before the entire 
inn-front. Unlike as they otherwise are, the 
greater part agree in displaying at the top 
the conventional far -eastern symbol that 
passes for a peak. 

From their general shape, size, and stamp- 
ing, the stranger will take them, at first blush, 
for the towels of the guests hung out in 
all innocence to dry, though their inordinate 
number slightly tax the credit of even Japan- 
ese tubability. Sojourn at the inn, how- 
ever, will shortly dispel this illusion by show- 
ing them to be fixtures, a permanent part of 
the real estate of the establishment. 



194 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Forced to change his idea as to their char- 
acter, the unenlightened will next conceive 
them to be some novel inn allurement, a sort 
of preposterous bait of landlord ingenuity, 
dangled thus to catch the public eye. Sec- 
ularly speaking, both inferences are correct. 
For they were towels, and are bait, but not 
of landlord invention. They are the ho-no- 
tenugui or gift towels of the pilgrim clubs. 

Once they were quite simply towels, be- 
stowed ingenuously upon the inn as tokens 
of favor by clubs that chanced to put up 
at it and be pleased; just as ladies in tour- 
ney times cast their hand-kerchiefs to their 
knightly choice. Not having handkerchiefs, 
the Japanese presented as keepsakes their 
towels instead, rather the more romantic 
souvenir of the two. 

But towels they are no longer. Time has 
raised them above domestic service. They 
are now a sort of club advertisement and 
guide-book combined. For though they are 
presented to the inn, they are presented for 
the benefit of those presenting them. Each 
bears conspicuously the club name and ad- 
dress, and is left with the landlord to be 
displayed for sign to subsequent brethren 



PILGRIMAGES. 1 95 

that this is where the club puts up. It is 
the inn asterisk in the pilgrim Baedeker. 

The pilgrims are very free with these cer- 
tificates of club satisfaction. On any fairly 
good inn you shall count from fifty to an 
hundred of them, and with hostelries of ex- 
ceptional entertainment the inn's eaves fail 
to accommodate all its pious indorsements, 
and stout poles planted in the street in front 
fly the overplus. Landlords spare no pains 
to display them, for the pilgrim patronage 
is individually not unlavish, and collectively 
is enormously large. 

The sight of such banner-bedizened inns 
will probably be the foreigner's first intro- 
duction to Japanese pilgrims, unless the 
equally striking spectacle of itinerants dis- 
tinguished by — and well-nigh extinguished 
under — huge toad-stool hats have already 
caused him to mark such plants as men 
walking. Once recognized, he will find both 
phenomena everywhere, for they form a 
regular part of the scenery. 

Now some of these pilgrim clubs turn out 
to play a most important role in god-posses- 
sion, being, in fact, clubs for the purpose. 
Some general account of them becomes, 
therefore, germane to our subject. 



I96 OCCULT JAPAN. 

To one of a poetic turn of thought the 
very name Shinto or the " Way of the Gods " 
pictures one long pilgrimage from earth to 
heaven. But such poesy is after all profane, 
the "way" here being as unvividly viewed 
by its followers as are the thousand and 
one other ways of the world by those who 
pursue them. Nevertheless, pilgrimages are 
more than foot-notes to its creed. 

Probably at no time and among no people 
have pilgrimages been so popular as in this 
same nineteenth century in Japan, temporary 
excitements like the crusades excepted. Even 
the yearly caravan of the Mahometan world 
to Mecca, though it draw from greater dis- 
tances and be invested with more pomp, does 
not imply so complete a habit. Every Japan- 
ese is a pilgrim at heart, though every sum- 
mer fail to find him actually on the march. 
Poverty compels him to do his plodding at 
home. Want of funds alone seems to stand 
in the way of the nation's taking the road in 
a body from the middle of July to the first of 
September. As it is, the country's thorough- 
fares at that season are beaded with folk 
wending their way to some shrine or other. 

Now there are three points worth not- 



PIL GRIM A GES. 1 97 

ing about these pilgrimages. The first is 
that the impulse to them is emphatically 
of the people. Like so many Japanese traits, 
art for instance, the pilgrim spirit is not an 
endowment of the upper classes, but the 
birthright of everybody. Indeed, it is chiefly 
the simple who go on pilgrimages, the gentle 
not being sufficiently given to walking. 

The next feature is their purely national 
character. Their patronage is quite insular. 
Their goals draw no devotees from outre mer> 
Buddhist though some of them be, no con- 
tingent ever crosses from China or Korea to 
visit them. On the other hand, to the more 
famous of them pilgrims flock from all over 
Japan. Men from one end of the empire 
meet there men from the other, and from all 
points in between ; a fact which in the eyes 
of the pilgrims adds greatly to the pleasure 
of the pilgrimage, since socially it is journey- 
ing the whole length of the land by only 
going part way. Regard for the smaller 
shrines is naturally bounded by a narrower 
horizon. But considering that till within ten 
years the means of conveyance were one's 
own feet, the attraction of even these lesser 
load-stars is felt surprisingly far. 



I98 OCCULT JAPAN. 

That the pilgrim spirit is thus in a twofold 
sense wholly national, — first in the sense of 
only y and then in the sense of all, — implies 
one important fundamental fact : that Japan- 
ese pilgrimages are not of Buddhist but of 
Shinto origin. It is the first hint of the ground- 
lessness of the Buddhist claims to spiritual 
ownership in the mountain-tops, all of which 
they assert they first made accessible to 
mankind. But in spite of the very catholic 
character of the pretension, the right to such 
eminent domain grows airier and airier the 
closer we scrutinize it. The Buddhist idea, 
like the early Christian, seems to have been, 
when confronted by a strong popular super- 
stition : Baptize it at once. 

The third peculiarity about these pilgrim- 
ages consists in their being probably the 
most unreligious in the world. Speaking 
profanely, they are peripatetic picnic parties, 
faintly flavored with piety; just a sufficient 
suspicion of it to render them acceptable to 
the easy-going gods. For a more mundanely 
merry company than one of these same pil- 
grim bands it would be hard to meet, and to 
put up at an inn in their neighborhood is to 
seem bidden to a ball. They are far more 



PILGRIMAGES, 1 99 

the " joly compagnie" of "fayerie " Chaucer 
tells us of than the joyless "lymytours " that 
displaced it. 

The Japanese go upon pilgrimages because 
they thoroughly enjoy themselves in the pro- 
cess, the piety incident to the act simply re- 
lieving them from compunction at having so 
good a time. Sociability is the keynote of 
the affair from start to finish. To pool one's 
pleasure is always to increase it, and for a 
Japanese to pool his purse is matter of as 
much account. For a Japanese is not only 
poor, but impecunious. His personal prop- 
erty of impersonality is only matched by the 
impersonality of his personal property. For 
what a Japanese appears to possess is, ten 
to one, borrowed of a friend, and what he 
really owns pledged to a neighbor. He is, 
in short, but a transition stage in one long 
shift of loan. We talk of our far-reaching 
system of mercantile credits. It is financial 
self-sufficiency beside the every-day state of 
far-eastern affairs. Everybody there lives 
as a matter of course upon somebody else. 
To these states of mind and money are due 
the founding of the pilgrim clubs. 

The pilgrim clubs {kosha or ko) are great 



200 OCCULT JAPAN. 

institutions in numbers as well as in other 
things. Indeed they are numerous beyond 
belief. Collectively they are said to com- 
prise eighty per cent, of the entire popula- 
tion of the empire, a statement I accept only 
at a popular discount. Their individual 
membership consists on the average of from 
one hundred to five hundred persons apiece. 
Some clubs are smaller than this, and of 
some the membership mounts into the thou- 
sands. The Tonieye ko, the largest I know 
of, has about twelve thousand men enrolled 
in it. That these are drawn chiefly from 
the small tradesman and artisan class speaks 
for the hold the habit has on the people. 

Ladies are quite eligible for election and 
even for office in these clubs. The wife of 
a tobacconist with whom I am acquainted is 
actually the head of a sub-sect, which com- 
prises several clubs ; and the husband is 
an enthusiastic club-man in one of them. 

The constitution of the clubs is delight- 
fully simple. The club charter is obtained 
from the head of the sect by some energetic 
individual of the society-founding propensity, 
who collects about him a few friends and 
incidentally appoints himself to the club pres- 



PIL GRIM A GES. 20 1 

idency, becoming what is called its sendatsu. 
When not thus self-appointed, the president 
is elected by the brethren for his piety, 
which is another name for the same thing. 

Besides their simplicity, one great charm 
about these clubs is their cheapness. What- 
ever may be argued by domestically inclined 
individuals against clubs generally on the 
score of expense, these at least would hardly 
seem open to the charge. For the initiation 
fee is from three to five cents (five to ten 
sen), and the dues from two thirds of a cent 
to a cent and a third (one to two sen) a 
month, according to the club. And yet the 
president of one of them once told me that 
the principal item in his club's running ex- 
penses was the cost of dunning the members 
for their dues. So lamentably lax in paying 
its debts is humanity the world over. But 
indeed it was a serious matter, for it 
amounted, it appeared, to a fifth of the gross 
receipts. His club consisted of five hundred 
members each of whom was supposed to pay 
eight cents a year into the club treasury; 
which sum it took eight dollars to collect. 

When his club obligations have finally 
been discharged, the member receives a 



202 OCCULT JAPAN. 

ticket (kansatsu) with the name of the club 
and of the sub-sect to which it belongs in- 
scribed on its face, and the name of the 
member and half the stamp of the club seal 
on its back. The other half remains in the 
registry books, of which the ticket is a slip. 
The ticket constitutes a certificate of mem- 
bership to all whom it may concern, inn- 
keepers principally. 

Forgetfulness to discharge one's club dues 
is the less excusable in the face of their being 
of the nature of gambling debts. For after 
the cost of collection and the other running 
expenses have been deducted, the remainder 
is raffled for by the members, and pocketed 
by the lucky winners through the club 
treasurer, for pilgrimage purposes. 

Once a year, about three weeks before the 
pilgrim band is to start, the lots are drawn, 
and in the drawing everybody who has paid 
up participates except the winners of pre- 
vious pools. They are barred, to give the 
unlucky a chance, till each shall have had his 
journey apiece. Thus are the inequalities of 
fate corrected and all eventually made happy 
at the club expense. 

The dues being so modest, the percentage 



PIL GRIM A GES. 203 

of prizes is necessarily small ; only about 
three members in a hundred being annually 
recipients of the club fund. Paucity of 
prizes doubtless conduces to remissness in 
paying up ; and even rotation in eligibility, 
just though it be, does not add to the desire 
of past beneficiaries to make present, per- 
sonally unprofitable, disbursement. 

The fortunate winners are held to be espe- 
cially invited of the gods to visit them. The 
club fund is turned over to the club treasurer 
for their benefit, and the others heartily 
envy them their lot. 

The envy is chiefly pecuniary. For though 
the god is supposed through the lots to show 
a pleasing preference for the winner's com- 
pany, he is not considered averse to self- 
invited visitors. Any one who wishes to join 
himself to the pilgrim company may do so 
at his own expense ; and very many avail 
themselves of the privilege. 

On the day appointed for the start, the 
god-chosen and the self-invited rendezvous 
at what stands to the club for club-house, 
and thence sally forth under the guidance of 
their revered president. This individual, be- 
ing presumably the holiest man in the club, 



204 OCCULT JAPAN. 

if not the actual author of its being, is 
clothed from the start with a certain fatherly 
prestige. His importance is heightened by 
the fact of his having made the pilgrimage 
several times before. Indeed, he goes usually 
every year, and paternally expounds the won- 
ders of the way to the brethren, who listen 
agape and retail it all in their turn to a no 
less spellbound audience at home. For, like 
the month of March, though in another way, 
they come in like lions who went out like 
lambs. 

The worthy man is not only the head but 
the only dead-head of the party. He alone 
pays no scot. There are thus more sub- 
stantial benefits accruing to the post of club 
president than simply a cicerone's gratified 
sense of importance. That he does not have 
to pay reminds one of directors' cars at 
home. However, so holy a person is other- 
wise superior to money considerations ; the 
purse being carried by the tori-shimari-nin 
or treasurer. 

The treasurer is the club's man-of-affairs, 
of very small affairs indeed. The Japanese 
are not above a monetary system which 
descends in decimals to the thousandth part 



PIL GRIM A GES. 205 

of a cent, and, what is more surprising, they 
keep accounts to the like infinitesimal fig- 
ures. Small wonder that neither arithmetic 
nor trade have charms for them. To such 
microscopic quantities the club treasurer is 
no stranger. Nothing is too minute to fig- 
ure in his cash-book, from a fresh pair of 
straw sandals at a cent and a half a pair to a 
pickle or two at next to nothing. To the 
bill for which, lilliputian in all but length, 
the innkeeper with due solemnity affixes his 
seal. 

In spite of the infinitesimal values of the 
separate items of the expense, the sum total 
invariably causes the club fund to fall short, 
the deficit having to be made up out of the 
individual pockets of the pilgrims. Unlike 
the club dues, this does not seem to be 
begrudged, the fact being that a pilgrimage 
is altogether too delectable a thing not to 
render those who indulge in it blind to its 
cost. 

In addition to the president and treasurer, 
there are other officials known as sewanin 
or help-men, officers whose principal duty 
would seem to be helping the president dun 
members for their dues. 



206 OCCULT JAPAN. 

The pilgrim clubs find no counterpart in 
China. They are therefore not an imported 
institution, but a custom indigenous to Japan. 

II. 

Japanese pilgrimages are of two kinds, the 
distinction being matter of topography. For 
though some pilgrimages are Buddhist, some 
Shinto, a much more fundamental point 
about them is the character of the country 
concerned — whether they are made to the 
lowland shrines or to the sacred summits. 

In importance, the Shinto pilgrimages 
come first, measuring importance by patron- 
age. Half a million folk, it is estimated, 
make the journey to the shrines at Ise every 
spring, and ten thousand climb Fuji every 
summer. Of the ten modern Shinto sects, 
all but two are addicted to going upon pil- 
grimages, and each has its special great 
goal, as well as innumerable minor ones. 
These goals are the spots dedicate to their 
special gods. Of the two sects without goals, 
one is a sort of government bureau, and is 
consequently sedentary. The other would 
seem to be in the act of evolving the pil- 
grimage habit, for it has pilgrim clubs which, 



PIL GRIM A GES. 207 

however, go no whither. Of the other eight, 
three are devoted to Ontake, two to Ise, two 
to Fuji, and one to Izumo. Sects do not 
mix goals, but it is quite permissible for in- 
dividuals to mix sects. So that persons of 
advanced pilgrimage proclivities can indulge 
them to any extent without too tiresome 
repetition. 

Pilgrimages to the lowland shrines and to 
the sacred peaks differ in several important 
respects ; in sex, to begin with. For femi- 
ninity has always flocked to the one, and, 
until western ideas broke down all the pro- 
prieties, was debarred the other. This was 
no matter of physique, but of piety. Woman 
was altogether too godless a creature to tread 
such holy ground as the peaks; an odd as- 
sumption, to our thinking, since woman with 
us, when not superficially godlike, is pretty 
sure to be godly. But the other side of the 
world thinks otherwise. It was considered 
favor enough to permit her to climb three 
quarters way up, where she was obliged to 
stop ; which must have been considerably 
more aggravating than not to have been 
allowed to climb at all. 

Proof, however, that this was an invidious 



208 OCCULT JAPAN. 

distinction, and that woman is by nature no 
less devout in Japan than elsewhere, is the 
way in which she tramps to the lowland 
shrines, and has a radiant time of it the 
whole distance. To see her trudging stur- 
dily along, beaming at the least provocation, 
the very impersonation of vacant good-hu- 
mor, does on,e good like a gleam of sunshine. 
Sometimes she dutifully follows in the wake 
of her lord and master ; sometimes she shuf- 
fles along in the exclusive society of her own 
sex, chattering continuously upon nothing 
at all. But she is always perfectly happy 
and apparently never tired. She knows no 
nerves. 

To the great Shrines of Ise it is the fashion 
for pilgrim clubs to go composed entirely of 
pilgrimesses, maidens of Kyoto and Osaka, 
who make the journey in bands of from fifty 
to a hundred, taking with them only one 
man, or two, to do the heavy work ; veritable 
bouquets of pretty girls. 

Stranger still, to our notions of propriety, 
little girls of eleven or twelve will surrep- 
titiously club together and slip off some fine 
morning all by themselves on a tramp to the 
shrine. There is at first some slight alarm 



PIL GRIM A GES. 209 

when the disappearance is discovered. But 
the very inquiry that raises anxiety soon 
lulls it by revealing similar bereavements 
among the parents' particular friends. Then 
the financial accomplices to the deed, kind- 
hearted neighbors, wheedled by the children 
into loaning them the necessary funds, come 
forward and own up, now that the borrowers 
are beyond recall. But, indeed, so soon as 
the cause of the flight is known, there would 
seem to be no thought of fetching back 
the fugitives. On the contrary, their act 
is deemed eminently praiseworthy, which 
strikes one as perhaps illogical. But religion 
covers a multitude of sins. 

The parental heart is not set quite at rest, 
however, till other pilgrims returning from 
the shrine bring word of the waifs ; one has 
met the little girls disembarking at Yokkai- 
chi, another saw them at the Ise inn. All 
report the truants quite well and happy, as if 
children at mischief were ever otherwise. 
Then, with palpitations of pride, the parents 
make great preparations against their return. 
Elaborate these are, for honor enough, appar- 
ently, cannot be done the young scapegraces. 
Long before they can possibly arrive, their 



210 OCCULT JAPAN. 

relatives go out to meet them many miles 
down the road, and then wait sometimes 
several days at a convenient village till the 
band heaves in sight. The girls are re- 
ceived with praise instead of blame, and 
amid great rejoicings escorted into town ; a 
reception which conduces to recurrence of 
the escapade. 

Each lowland shrine has its special festi- 
val season, although it may also be visited 
advantageously at other times. Pilgrimage 
to the shrines at Ise is made at the time the 
cherries blow. Then the great highways 
that lead thither are as gay with pilgrim folk 
beneath as their flower aisles are bright with 
blossom overhead. The progress of each 
band is one long triumphal march. As it 
nears an inn where it purposes to spend the 
night, runners are dispatched ahead to notify 
the place of its coming, which instantly be- 
comes all bustle to receive it. Hastily don- 
ning their best clothes, the maids and other 
servants scamper out to meet the band and 
escort it in with festival pomp. A feast fol- 
lows in the evening quite as spirituous as 
spiritual, pointed with pious song right secu- 
larly sung. At the end of it there is some- 



PIL GRIM A GES. 2 1 1 

thing very like a break-down by the whole 
company, maids and all. The pilgrims rising, 
make a ring about the maids in the middle 
and then walk round and round chanting 
the Ise hymn, while the maids join lustily 
in the chorus. In this unpuritanical fashion 
is each evening brought to a close. 

Upon their departure the next morning 
the pilgrims present everybody with sou- 
venirs of themselves : the inn with the club 
banner and the maids with their club visit- 
ing-cards. Especially is the president to the 
fore with this charming attention. Both 
kinds of keepsakes are carried in large quan- 
tities by the band, and distributed unstint- 
edly. For not to scatter such mementos of 
themselves along their route would be, in 
pilgrim estimation, to travel in vain. The 
landlord beams on the threshold, and the 
maids, all smiles, attend the band some dis- 
tance out, and then throw good wishes after 
it till it disappears down the road. 

But the supreme moment is when the 
company reenters in triumph its native 
town. Careful account has been kept of 
its whereabouts, and just before it is due 
horses strangely and gorgeously caparisoned 



212 OCCULT JAPAN. 

are sent out to meet it. On either side the 
horses' necks are stuck long bamboo fronds, 
from which hang scarfs of gayly colored 
crape. Each horse carries a rich riding 
saddle, to which are fastened two paniers, 
one on either hand ; each steed thus seating 
three persons apiece, one astride in the 
middle, and two asquat in the baskets on the 
sides. With the steeds are sent personal 
adornments for the pilgrims ; hats made of 
flowers {Jianagasd) and gayly embroidered 
coats, beside cakes and coppers for scatter- 
ing to the crowd. Thus accoutred, rollick- 
ing along and strewing the largess as they 
pass, the pious pilgrims make their entry 
home. That evening a banquet is given them 
by their relatives and friends, regardless of 
expense, like to some coming of age in the 
gay middle ages. Sake and merriment flow 
without stint, and not till the next day do 
the pilgrims sink back again into private 
life ; holier folk, however, ever after. 



PIL GRIM A GES. 2 1 3 

III. 

More serious matters are the pilgrimages 
to the peaks. The seriousness shows itself 
on the surface in the matter of dress. For 
according to the character of the pilgrimage 
is the character of the costume worn by 
the pilgrim. To the shrines in the plain, 
the thing to wear is the height of holiday 
attire ; for the peaks, on the other hand, the 
consecrated dress is as plain as possible. 

Theoretically, the costume of the ascen- 
sionists is pure white or pearl-gray, accord- 
ing to their sect or pilgrim club ; practically 
it is a grimy dirt-color in both cases. For 
it is never washed, the travel stains being 
part of its acquired sanctity. Its hue, self- 
effacing to begin with, is thus further ren- 
dered by nature self-obliterating. It be- 
comes, therefore, doubly expressive of a 
proper blankness within. 

It begins with a huge mushroom hat made 
of wood-shavings cleverly plaited, held on by 
a complication of straps. Natural deal-color 
is deemed in this connection as holy as pure 
white, since both are attempts at colorless- 
ness. Under this hat, umbrella, or parasol, 



214 OCCULT JAPAN. 

for it is most serviceably all of them as occa- 
sion requires, the pilgrim wears a handker- 
chief in fillet round his brow. A long white 
tunic comes next, which theoretically is the 
pilgrim's only garment, except of course the 
ubiquitous loin-cloth. Practically he usually 
has on something beneath it, first in the shape 
of a shirt and then of tight-fitting trouser- 
drawers. The tunic is thoroughly stamped 
with ideographs ; some of them being the 
names of the gods of the mountain, some 
those of the pilgrim club. Girdling this is 
a long belt-sash, round which often runs a 
row of transmogrified Sanskrit letters, quite 
illegible to the wearer or to any one else, 
so caricatured have they been by successive 
ignorant transmission. Their illegibility of 
course enhances their religious effect ; just 
as the word " amen " sounds incomparably 
holier than " so be it." White gaiters, white 
cloven socks, and straw sandals complete the 
more intimate part of the costume. The gai- 
ters are sometimes lavender for the ladies. 

But the most peculiar portion of the dress 
is the wing-like mat (goza) which the pilgrim 
wears over his shoulders by a strap across 
the breast. As it extends beyond his arms 



PIL GRIM A GES. 2 1 5 

on either side and flaps in the wind as he 
walks, it gives him an ostrich-like effect at 
a distance, and what I conceive to be a 
seraphic one nearer to. At all events, it is 
the nearest mundane attempt at angelic rep- 
resentation. What is even more saintly, it is 
quite without vainglorious intent, being sim- 
ply a combination waterproof-coat and linen- 
duster. It is also, very conveniently, both a 
carpet and a bed. 

Quite as inseparable a part of the pilgrim 
is his staff. This is sometimes round, some- 
times octagonal, and is branded with the 
name of the peak, and stamped in red with 
the sign of the shrine at the place where the 
ascent is supposed to begin. The imprint 
further takes pains to state whether the pil- 
grim came in by the front door or by the 
back one, mountains usually having both 
entrances, the original path being considered 
the front approach. The staves are counter- 
stamped again at the summit ; the holy seals 
effectually silencing all skepticism on the 
pilgrim's return, and permitting his imagina- 
tion freer play in the domestic circle. 

Somewhere about his person each man 
carries a kerosene-looking tin can in which 



2l6 OCCULT JAPAN. 

to take home the holy water, a specialty of 
sacred peaks. With sublime superiority to 
detail it cures all ills, irrespective of their 
character. 

In his right hand the leader of the party 
holds a bell which he rings as he walks ; 
others often do the same. The tinkle of this 
bell, together with the chanting in which all 
join, imparts a fine processional effect to the 
march, very impressive to less pious way- 
farers. 

Up their sleeves or tucked into their gir- 
dles the pilgrims carry go/iei-wa.nds, rosaries, 
and other tools of their trade ; together with 
the indispensable pilgrim banners, badges, 
and the club's visiting cards. Of earthly 
baggage they have none. The reason for 
this has a moral. It is done to ingratiate 
the gods, because of the greater peril of pil- 
grimages to the peaks. The gods are sup- 
posed to have a fancy for such ascetic attire, 
and to protect themselves against the dan- 
gers of the ascent the pilgrims take particu- 
lar pains to propitiate the gods ; a reason 
kin to that the little girl gave for omitting 
her prayers in the morning, though she said 
them scrupulously at night ; that she needed 



PILGRIMAGES. 2\*J 

God to protect her while she was asleep, but 
that she could look after herself in the day- 
time. 

If the costume seem somewhat destitute 
of comfort, the mountain itself is not. The 
traditional ascetics are described, indeed, as 
having made the ascent on single-toothed 
clogs, which certainly sounds difficult, and 
was thought a particularly meritorious thing 
to do. Its merit lay in thus avoiding crush- 
ing stray beetles, it is said. But the moun- 
tain knows such rigorous single-mindedness 
no more. Nowadays the ascent is specially 
convenienced for the comfort of the pious 
climbers. Every sacred peak is well rib- 
boned with paths which are all thought- 
fully beaded with rest-houses at intervals 
suited to the weakness of the flesh. A care- 
taker inhabits each of these hostelries and 
dispenses tea, cakes, water, and other fare to 
the exhausted, besides providing futon and 
such-like necessaries for spending the night. 
In the season the huts are crowded with 
pilgrims. Nominally there are always ten 
of them on every path from base to summit ; 
one at the end of each section into which 
the path is fictitiously divided. The parts go 



2l8 OCCULT JAPAN. 

by the rather surprising name of " gills" 
(go) ; the first "gill" being just within the 
mountain's portal, and the tenth welcoming 
the pilgrim at the top. Amid much that is 
passing strange in the Japanese method of 
mountaineering, this startlingly liquid meas- 
ure for a painfully waterless slope is perhaps 
the strangest ; for it is not the rest-houses 
that are so designated, but the path itself 
with what, considering its distressingly dry 
condition, must be thought very ill-placed 
humor. In explanation it is said that moun- 
tains are likened to heaps of spilled rice, 
the measure being one for both rice and 
liquids, and reckoned at a sho, or three pints, 
quite irrespective of size. The length of the 
path, by an easy extension, is called a quart 
and a half, and then divided into tenths, each 
of which becomes a gill. 

Shrines beside the path are almost as nu- 
merous as rest-houses. Temples also are 
not wanting. There are several at the bot- 
tom, one at the top, and often others be- 
tween, for though there be few on the flanks 
themselves, the foot of a mountain is of in- 
definite length. Untenanted by priests, they 
all stand open to the public, and the cords of 



PIL GRIM A GES. 2 1 9 

their bells hang in mute invitation to the pil- 
grim to call upon the god. 

But most peculiar and picturesque of the 
features of the way are the torii or skeleton- 
archways that straddle the path, Japanese 
colossi of roads. There are many of them 
for every shrine, the outermost placed at a 
seemingly quite disconnected distance away 
from what it heralds. The several passes 
known as Torii toge y scattered all over 
Japan, are all so called from such portals 
erected on their summits to sacred peaks 
visible from them in clear weather. One of 
the most important is the Torii toge on the 
Nakasendo, through whose arch the pilgrim, 
as he tops the pass, catches his first view of 
Ontake, a long snow-streaked summit, seen 
over intervening ranges of hills, thirty-five 
miles away, as the crane flies, or would fly, 
were he not practically extinct in Japan. 
This is the outer portal of all ; after this the 
pilgrim finds gateway after gateway across 
his path, till the last ushers him on to the 
holy summit itself. Distrust of his own pur- 
ity prevents the pious from actually passing 
under them on the ascent, and he modestly 
goes round them instead. On the descent, 
holiness conquers humility. 



220 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Shrines, rest-houses, and portals make 
breathing spots for the pilgrims, which the 
church instantly turns to business account, 
for the church is not above trade. In its 
hands, faith very properly becomes a market- 
able commodity. In return for ready money 
it barters its salvation in the shape of 
charms. These are usually small pieces of 
paper stamped with the names of the gods, 
and sometimes lithographed with rude por- 
traits of the same, manufactured by the mil- 
lion and sold for a cent. With such popular 
prices, sales are enormous, and booths under 
the charge of holy salesmen do a continuous 
business from morning to night, for no pil- 
grim passes on his way without buying his 
charm. Some of these (mamori) guard one 
against special catastrophe, disease, or mis- 
fortune ; some bring particular good luck, 
such as a prolific propagation of one's silk- 
worms ; others are cure-alls and universal 
protectors. Charms are religion's epigrams ; 
packet essences of truth, potent for being 
portably put. When the pilgrims get home, 
they pin them upon the lintel of their outer 
doors, and few doors in any Tokyo street 
but are placarded with them. 



PIL GRIM A GES. 22 1 

The pilgrims are much given to chanting 
as they march. They do it as naturally as 
some people whistle. The Ise bands go roll- 
ing along to the enlivening cadence of the 
Ise onddy and to many more special odes set 
to what with good will passes for music. It 
is rhythm on the road to song, a caterpillar 
stage in the art of melody, lacking as yet 
transformation to the winged thing. 

The chants consecrated to the peaks are 
more truly processionals. Common to all 
of them is the stirring refrain Rokkon shojo ; 
Uyama kaisei, chanted antiphonally in two 
tones, the second about a fifth higher than 
the first. Literally, the meaning of the re- 
frain is : May our six parts be pure, and 
may the weather on the honorable peak be 
fine. But the words are mystic to most of 
those who repeat them. The first half is a 
portion of one of the purification prayers, 
the rokkon shojo no harai> the second a part 
of a prayer for fine weather. It is, so I am 
informed, simply invaluable in dispelling 
mist. 

Unlike the gods of the lowland shrines, 
which have each their special reception 
days, the gods of the peaks are all of them 



222 OCCULT JAPAN. 

at home to mankind at the same season — 
midsummer. This is very considerate on 
their part, since to visit them at any other 
time would be troublesome. In consequence, 
in Japanese eyes, an ascent out of season is 
not only impious, but actually impossible. 
Every year, about the 20th of July, takes 
place what is known as the mountain-open- 
ing. At that time, all over Japan, the moun- 
tain-paths are repaired, the huts unbarred 
and put in order, and the peaks climbed with 
great pomp for the first ascent of the season. 
The peaks then remain open till about the 
5th of September, when they are again de- 
serted till the next July. 

In this manner the " Goddess who makes 
the Flower Buds to blossom " receives her 
worshipers upon Fuji's crater-crest, to which 
a temple just without, known as the Goddess' 
Welcome, ushers them up. Other gods and 
goddesses are similarly visited upon their 
special peaks. But on all but one the eye 
of faith alone perceives them ; only on one 
are they incarnate in the flesh. 



PILGRIMAGES. 223 

IV. 

For there is one mountain that makes 
bourne to a farther journey than any possi- 
ble to the feet. Ontake is goal to the soul's 
pilgrimage into the other world. For Ontake 
is the mountain of trance. To its summit 
pilgrims ascend, not simply to adore but 
to be there actually incarnate of the gods. 
Through the six weeks in which the gods 
deign to receive man, divine possessions 
daily take place upon it. Furthermore, it is 
the only peak in Japan where, of the spot's 
own instance, such communion is thought to 
occur. It is what the Japanese call the great 
original (hon mold) of trance ; other peaks, 
such as Omanago near Nikko, getting their 
power by direct spiritual descent from it. 

In keeping with the character of the peak, 
is the character of the pilgrim clubs that 
climb it. The Ontake clubs differ from all 
their fellows in being divine-possession clubs. 
To become entranced is the club occupation. 
Instead of simple prayer-meetings in their 
dead season, these clubs hold regular stances 
for the purpose of being possessed, seances 
which they turn to very practical ends. For 



224 OCCULT JAPAN. 

they direct all the important affairs of their 
lives by such revelation. Once a month 
they hold communion of the sort, and every 
midsummer as many of them as may travel 
to Ontake for a yet higher spiritual flight. 
The thin, pure air of the peaks is conducive 
to ethereality, and Ontake is furthermore in- 
vested with faith's most potent spell. If to 
have faith as a grain of mustard seed can re- 
move mountains, it is not easy to set bounds 
to what a mountain of it might not be able 
to do. 

Each club is a divine dramatic company 
in itself, containing all the performers neces- 
sary to a possession. Only in very small 
clubs is such organization lacking. But as 
in this case their president is often president 
of some larger club, the loan of a nakaza is 
easily managed. For the president borrows 
of himself in the one capacity what he needs 
in the other. 

Very large clubs contain several such com- 
panies. There may be as many as fifteen 
nakaza in a club, and twice that number of 
maeza. There is no rule in the matter. But 
except for exceptional cases of esprit de corps, 
many maeza, or nakaza, in one club do not 



PIL GRIM A GES. 225 

apparently make a happy family of it, find- 
ing divided prestige disagreeable. So, like 
queen bees, they swarm with their follow- 
ing and found a new club. Such fission is 
one mode of club generation. Another is by 
the spontaneous generation from the fertile 
brain of some energetic individual spoken of 
above. 

Once started, each club is a spiritual law 
unto itself — a possession Salpetriere per- 
petuating its own peculiar practices. For it 
educates its own nakaza under the tuition of 
its maeza and the previous nakaza. The 
tuition is one long process in purification. 
A man begins as a simple member, gradu- 
ally rises to a lower part in the function, and, 
if proficient, may eventually rise to be a god- 
possessed. The outward ceremonies are of 
course consciously copied, the inward initia- 
tive quite unconsciously conformed to. 

When one subject has thus educated his 
successor he retires from active practice, be- 
coming what is called an inkyo-nakaza. An 
inkyo, lit. a dweller in retirement, is a sin- 
gular Japanese conception. It denotes a 
man who has abdicated all earthly cares, 
duties, and responsibilities in favor of his 



226 OCCULT JAPAN. 

son ; a man professedly gone from the world 
while still patently in it. This is a state of 
existence immaterial enough, but to be a 
retired potential god would seem a doubly 
etherealized idea. Nevertheless the thing 
exists, and in case of sickness or other in- 
capacity on the part of the nakaza, the man 
who represents this abdicated embodiment 
of immateriality performs in the other's 
place. 

The chief difference between the various 
schools of divinity consists in the opening 
or non-opening of the eyes of the possessed 
during the height of the trance. But all the 
other actions of the possessed during the 
trance are likewise stereotyped. His whole 
behavior in it is no more nor less than a 
bundle of hypnotic habits. The mechanical 
raising of the go&ei-wand to his forehead, 
the peculiar frenzied shake he gives it, the 
settling of it again to a statesque imperative 
before his brow, are all but so many cases of 
unintentional artificiality. This is particu- 
larly discernible in the difference between 
the simpler attitudes of the Ryobu trances 
and the more elaborate poses of the pure 
Shintd ones. The Buddhist feminine fash- 
ions, again, are different from either. 



PIL GRIM A GES. 22J 

To be a club nakaza is pretty hard work. 
He must be possessed at least two or three 
times a month, and may be called upon to 
be somebody beside himself much oftener. 
It depends upon how much divination work 
there is to be done. This work is of two 
kinds. There is first the regular routine 
business of the club in the way of prophecy : 
the foretelling of drought, storms, earth- 
quakes, and other general catastrophes af- 
fecting the interest of the club. Some 
clubs have to interview the gods once a 
month on such matters ; others manage to 
get along on two questionings a year, at the 
two great semi-annual festivals. This is 
probably due to club-temperament, just as 
it suffices some people to ask a question 
once for all, while others have to be per- 
petually putting it under indistinguishably 
different forms. In addition to this routine 
work there are the inevitable extras : the 
unavoidable illnesses, to be cured by divine 
prescription, and incidentally any other mis- 
fortunes to which flesh is heir, all of which 
the god is expected to relieve on application. 
Between these various duties the god, and 
incidentally the poor nakaza, is kept pretty 



228 OCCULT JAPAN. 

busy. To be so frequently divine has its 
drawbacks. Except for his succes d'estime^ 
a nakaza must wish at times that he were 
merely mortal. Even in all the club diseases, 
to be both doctor and patient, which is what 
it amounts to, is no slight strain on the poor 
man's constitution. 

The god's conversation, though not super- 
ficially brilliant, is tolerably to the point, and 
certainly suggests intuition at times, though 
I know no cases of a very startling nature. 
The best instance I witnessed was the divin- 
ing by the god of the pain in the leg of a 
friend of mine, to which, since the man was 
unknown to him and betrayed the fact by no 
outward sign, there was no visible clue. 

The prophecies are not striking, though 
quite satisfactory to the club. They are 
religiously recorded on slips of paper and 
filed in the club archives. So that one may 
find there what the club's history was, or 
should have been, month by month in the 
past. The prophecies are laconic and indefi- 
nite enough to figure in the predictions of 
the "New England Farmer's Almanac;" a 
lack of precision which does not detract 
from their chance of verification. 



PILGRIMAGES. 229 

Other-world work is apparently quite com- 
patible with hard work in this. One of my 
special friends, the nakaza of the August 
Dance Pilgrim Club is a case in point. His 
club communes once a month and his duties 
begin as soon as ever the monthly business 
accounts are settled. He then comes in for 
a series of possession engagements. Indeed, 
if you apply for a sitting you will find his 
time taken up ahead in a way to suggest 
more earthly callings. In addition to all of 
which he works like anybody else at his reg- 
ular trade, and is a strong, hearty young fel- 
low in spite of his being a god so goodly a 
fraction of his time. 

Thus, humble though their active mem- 
bers be, the Ontake pilgrim clubs furnish 
society not to be found in any other clubs 
on earth : the company of heaven is to be 
had for the asking. For the Ontake pilgrim 
clubs are the only clubs in the world whose 
honorary members are, not naval officers, 
not distinguished foreigners, not princely 
figureheads, but gods. 




THE GOHEI. 




jN the beginning of this account of 
Japanese divine possession I stated 
that it was of Shint5 origin, and I 
promised later to justify the assertion. The 
time has come to fulfill that promise. Hav- 
ing seen that esoteric Shinto is esoteric, it 
becomes pertinent now to show that it is 
Shinto. 

To prove this initially was anything but 
the forthright matter it may seem. For the 
establishing of the genuineness of the act 
of possession was child's play beside estab- 
lishing the genuineness of the possession of 
the act. At first glance the latter was as 
prettily mixed up an intellectual lawsuit as 
one could buy into. Nobody really knew 
anything about the case, and those who con- 
fidently ventured a verdict did so in suspi- 
cious accordance with their special interest ; 



THE GOHEI. 231 

while as for general principles, so far as they 
proved anything, they turned out to prove 
what was not true. 

Two claimants presented themselves for 
possession of the cult, Shinto and Buddhism. 
That the cult was chiefly practiced by neither, 
but by a third party well known to be illegit- 
imate, called, with a certain pious duplicity 
of meaning, Both, — such being the literal 
rendering of the term Ryobu, — did not sim- 
plify matters. For the hybrid Ryobu, having 
candidly confessed its illegitimacy, dumbly 
refused to confess further on the subject. 

The importance of the inquiry quite tran- 
scends the question of creed. Did it not do 
so, we might safely leave it to the zeal of 
church polemics. But it is not simply a 
question of religion ; it is a question of race. 
For if the thing be Shinto, it is purely Jap- 
anese ; if Buddhist, it is but another bit of 
foreign importation. In the one case it pos- 
sesses the importance that attaches to being 
of the soil, in the other merely such super- 
ficial interest as attaches to soiling, — mat- 
ter of much less archaeologic account. The 
point thus possesses ethnic consequence. 

Direct inquiry elicited worse than igno- 



232 OCCULT JAPAN. 

ranee ; it evolved a peculiarly mystifying 
doubt. For the priestly evidence was bit- 
terly baffling. No sooner had one man con- 
vincingly told his tale than another came 
along with an upsettingly opposite story. 
The sole point in which the tellers substan- 
tially agreed lay in ascribing it pretty unan- 
imously each to his own particular faith. 
The Shintoists asserted that it was Shinto ; 
the Buddhists that it was Buddhist ; while 
the Ryobuists ascribed it at times to the one, 
but more commonly to the other. A few 
humble brethren modestly admitted that they 
did not know. 

The only fact that emerged tolerably self- 
evident from this bundle of contradiction 
was that somebody had stolen the cult from 
somebody else, but as to which of these rep- 
utable parties was the reprehensible robber, 
and which his unfortunate victim, the poor 
investigator was left sadly at a loss to dis- 
cover. 

Where doctors of divinity disagreed in this 
alarming manner, it seemed hopeless to try 
to decide between them. Under such weighty 
counter-assertions one's own opinion swung 
balance-wise to settle at last to the lowest 



THE GOHEI. 233 

level of equi-doubt. And there, so far as 
mere human help could go, it might have 
stayed forever in indeterminate suspension. 

At this critical dead-point in the investiga- 
tion, when any advance toward conviction 
seemed an impossibility, a bit of circumstan- 
tial evidence suddenly presented itself to turn 
the scale. I say presented itself, for it was 
not through the deposition of either contend- 
ing party that it came into court. It wan- 
dered in one day unexpectedly, and proceeded 
quietly to give most damaging testimony in 
the case. Indeed its evidence was crucial. 
Oddly enough, this circumstantial witness 
appeared in the shape of what stands to 
Shinto for crucifix — tho, gohei. 

The acquaintance of the gohei is among 
the first that one makes in Japan. The 
startling zigzags of that strange strip of 
white paper, pendent at intervals from a 
straw rope lining the lintel of some temple- 
front, instantly catch the eye with the real- 
istic suggestion of lightning. Indeed, so far 
as looks go, the thing might very well be a 
flash of that hasty but undecided visitant of 
the skies, caught unawares by some chance, 
and miraculously paper-fled. For striking 



234 OCCULT JAPAN. 

enough it still is. And that its discontinuities 
of direction can all be fashioned out of one 
continuous sheet remains one of those hope- 
less mysteries of construction kin to the 
introduction of the apple into the dumpling, 
till one has actually seen the sheet cut and 
folded into shape before his eyes. 

Specimens enough, however, he is sure to 
see, first without and then within the tem- 
ple building. As it drapes the entrance, 
so it hangs in holy frieze around the holiest 
rooms, appearing at every possible oppor- 
tunity, till, finally, at the very heart of the 
shrine, it stands upright upon a wand, the 
central object of regard upon the altar. 

But it is by no means confined to the 
temples, the miya and the jinja, plentifully 
as these are dotted over the land. Almost 
every house has its kami-dana or Shintd- 
god's shelf, a tiny household shrine, the glo- 
rification of some cupboard or recess. And 
there in the half-light stands the gohei again, 
there in the heart of each Japanese home. 

It is no more confined to an indoor life 
than man himself. You shall meet it abroad 
all over the land, in the most unexpected 
nooks and corners. The paths that lead so 



THE GO HE I. 235 

prettily over Japanese hill and valley are set 
with wayside oratories and before many of 
them stands a goliei on its stick, sometimes 
quite humanly housed under a tiny shed, 
sometimes canopied only by the sky and the 
stars. Thoroughfare, field, and forest know 
it alike. Now it marks a quiet eddy in the 
tide of traffic of a bustling town, and now, 
the long year through, it points the bleak 
summit of some lonely peak that only in 
midsummer knows the foot of man. 

Welcoming anchorite to the mountaineer, 
it is no less the farmer's friend. In fact it is 
peculiarly addicted to agriculture. When 
the growing rice begins to dream of the ear, 
it makes its appearance in the paddy-fields, 
stationed here and there among the crops, 
keeping an overseer eye upon them from the 
top of a tall stick. 

But strangest post of all, you shall chance 
upon it some fine day riding in festival pro- 
cession, perched in solitary grandeur upon 
the saddle of a richly caparisoned horse. 

In short, it is omnipresent, this Shint5 
symbol. 

Its religious significance it would be hard 
to overestimate. It is to Shinto what the 



236 OCCULT JAPAN. 

crucifix is to Christianity and a great deal 
more ; one of those symbols which modern 
defenders of the faith take much pains to 
assure you is only a symbol, and no pains 
whatever to prevent the people from wor- 
shiping as a god. As Shintoists are not so 
much distressed to harmonize their beliefs 
with science, being as yet unfired by the 
burning desire to know the reasons of 
things, they make small distinction between 
the gohei and the god. In many cases they 
make none at all. 

For there are two kinds of gohei ; the one, 
the harai-bei or purification present, and the 
other, the shintai or god's body. The first 
has for analogue in Christianity the crucifix. 
It is the universal Shintd symbol of conse- 
cration. Wherever you meet it you may 
know the spot at once for holy ground dedi- 
cate to the god ; and specimens of it may be 
seen in profusion about any Shinto temple. 
They are the gohei that first greet the devo- 
tee, pendent from the sacred straw rope 
upon the lintel of the temple door ; and 
they are the gohei that festoon the building's 
eaves and make frieze to the holier rooms 
within. It is they also that in the possession 



THE GO HE I. 237 

act inclose the place of the god's descent 
and sanctify it to his brief habiting. In 
short, wherever a gohei is hung up you may 
know it for one of the purification kind. 

To the second or the god's body variety 
belong all such as are stood upright upon a 
wand. The gokei that makes cynosure upon 
the temple altar is of this kind and so is the 
one so daintily domesticated in the family 
cupboard at home. So also are those met 
with in the mart, on the mountain-top, and 
amid the paddy-fields. Last but most im- 
portant of all these vicarious emblems of 
deity is that which is clenched in the hands 
of the possessed during the possession trance. 

They are called the god's body, not be- 
cause they are permanently god, but because 
they may become his embodiment at any 
moment. The little that we know of the 
evolution of the goJiei will help explain what 
is supposed to take place. Its name signifies 
cloth, gohei meaning august cloth or present ; 
the former meaning having in course of time 
developed through a whole gamut of gifts in 
the concrete into the latter meaning in the 
abstract. For the gohei is the direct de- 
scendant of the hempen cloth hung on the 



238 OCCULT JAPAN. 

sacred sakaki (the Cleyera Japonicd) in pres- 
ent to the gods. A relative of this its an- 
cestor may still be seen in Korea in the 
shreds of colored cloth attached there to 
the devil trees ; a shift of devotion which 
need distress no one, since devils and gods 
are always first cousins in any faith. 

From hemp its material constitution 
changed successively first to cotton, then to 
silk, and finally to its present modest paper, 
a transformation of substance quite in step 
economically with the progress of the arts. 
As to its color, the earliest mention of it — 
in the Kojiki, recorded therefore as early as 
anything in Japan — tells of two kinds, one 
dark blue, the other white, used together. 
Nowadays it is almost always the plain 
white of ordinary paper. But occasionally 
gohei of the far-oriental elemental colors, 
yellow, red, black, white, and blue, may be 
seen in a row, a cosmic quinquenity of the 
five elements, wood, fire, earth, water, and 
metal. 

Cloth it was, clothes it has become. For 
in form it now symbolizes the vesture of the 
god. Falling in spotless folds that spread 
out on either side about the wand, it suggests, 



THE GOHEL % 239 

even to the undevout, the starched flounces 
of some ceremonial dress. In the Ryobu 
variety the central connecting link is raised 
upright in the midst, clothes-pinned upon 
the stick ; owing to its cut, it flanges out a 
little toward the top, which does for the di- 
vine neck and head. In the purer Shinto 
form the top piece is bent down over the 
rest, symbolic of a more perfect pose. 

On occasion the god deigns to inhabit this 
habit of his. Such embodiment, indeed, is 
graciously taking place every day at any 
Shinto temple. To say that it takes place 
at the god's pleasure, however, is to put it 
flatteringly to the god ; for it really happens 
at the will of the worshiper. Every prayer, 
even the merest momentary mumble, in- 
volves incarnation of the gohei by the god, 
and at a moment's call. For before he be- 
gins his prayer the worshiper claps his 
hands. This is a summons to the god to 
descend ; a like signal bids him depart. At 
any popular shrine there is thus a continual 
coming and going on the part of the god ; 
which seems understandable enough until 
one attempts to understand it. For what 
happens when two persons call at overlap- 



240 OCCULT JAPAN. 

ping times upon one and the same god, so 
that one worshiper bids him be gone while 
the other would still have him stay, is not 
strictly clear. But such complications con- 
front the too curious in all theories of an- 
thropomorphic gods, especially when their 
worshipers are on intimate terms with them. 
I merely suggest it here as a problem in 
higher esoterics. 

Cases of incarnation where the god may 
be supposed more nearly to suit his own 
convenience are those of the gohei of the 
paddy-fields. These are divine scarecrows, 
or rather scare-locusts, those pests of the 
paddy-field farmer. They are scarecrows, 
however, in an occult sense, for in spite of 
resembling gods as monstrously as the more 
secular monstrosities do man, it is not their 
looks which the locusts do not like, but their 
disposition. And, to judge from their general 
employment, they appear to do as effective 
police duty in frightening off insects as those 
about the temple do in frightening off imps. 

Another instance of the gohei incarnated 
of the god is where it is borne in festival 
procession sitting upon the sacred horse. 
This animal, usually an albino, is the god's 



THE GO HE I. 241 

steed of state, kept for the divine use in the 
sacred stable, an adjunct to all well-appointed 
shrines. For in these festivals it is no stick 
that rides ; the god himself sits in the sad- 
dle. It is the god's chosen way of appearing 
in public. In no other way, indeed, does the 
god ever leave the temple. The prurient 
may possibly detect some inconsistency be- 
tween this statement and the one made 
above to the effect that the god is always 
coming and going ; but it should be remem- 
bered that in no cosmogony is consistency 
expected of spirits. Besides, to go out in 
state and to go out incognito are two very 
different things, even in the case of royalty. 
All these are examples of quite invisible 
possessions. Though the god be there, the 
undevout would never know it. But there 
are sensible possessions of the gohei; cases 
where the incarnation of the god may be 
both seen and felt. It will be remembered 
that the first sign of the coming on of the 
possession in the possession trance is the 
shaking of the go/iei-wand. So spontaneous 
does this shaking seem, that it is no wonder 
it should be thought so in fact. The gohei 
shakes, believers say, because the god de- 



242 occult japan: 

scends into it, and it quivers yet as passing 
through it he slips on into the body of the 
man. Without its mediation possession 
would not take place. The gohei is thus a 
sort of spirit lightning-rod to conduct the 
divine spirit into the human one. It is not, 
therefore, without a certain poetic fitness 
that it should look so like lightning. 

Another case of its visible possessions, 
one where it plays a more autonomous part, 
is its christening power. A very curious 
custom this, and so far as I know one quite 
unknown to foreigners; so much so that 
more than one of my acquaintance who has 
had children by a Japanese wife have stoutly 
maintained that no such custom exists. It 
is a fact, nevertheless. 

There are three methods of naming chil- 
dren in vogue among Shintoists. One, the 
most obvious and the least devout, is for the 
father to name the child himself. The next 
in an ascending scale of piety is for the 
father to select several suitable names and 
then submit the choice among them to the 
god. The way the god shows his choice is 
as follows : The father brings the child to 
the temple, and with him slips of paper in- 



THE GOHEL 243 

scribed with possible names. Three or five 
is the usual number. The priest rolls them 
up separately, puts them into a bowl, and 
after due incarnation angles for them with 
a gohei upon a wand. Whichever the gohei 
fishes out first is the god-given name the 
child is to bear ; a convenient custom when 
a father is in doubt between the far-eastern 
equivalents of Tom, Dick, or Harry. This 
ceremony takes place when the infant is a 
week old. It is not to be confounded with 
the miya mairi, which takes place a month 
after birth and is not our christening at all, 
but akin to the Hebraic presentation of the 
child at the temple. For at the miya mairi 
the child, named some weeks before, is pre- 
sented to its guardian god and formally put 
under his protection. This style of chris- 
tening is also largely performed by the pil- 
grim clubs. 

The third method of getting the babe a 
name is by possession pure and simple. 
The nakaza goes into his trance, the god 
descending through the gohei, and the maeza 
asks the god what he will have the baby 
called, to which the god makes reply. This 
method of christening one's child is reputed 



244 OCCULT JAPAN. 

the most holy of the three, and is duly prac- 
ticed by the ultra devout. Of the population 
of Japan, about twenty per cent., it is esti- 
mated, are named thus by the gohei or the 
god, — about ten per cent, by each. 

From such many and various capacities 
inherent in the gohei may be gathered the 
part it plays in the thoughts of the Japanese 
people. Indeed, it is all that is most Shinto, 
and reversely Shintd is mostly all gohei. 

It is, therefore, not surprising that in the 
wholesale Buddhist spoliation of Shintd the 
gohei should have been one of the few pos- 
sessions which Shinto was able to retain. 
Not that some of the Buddhist sects did 
not flatteringly adopt it. The Shingon and 
Nichiren sects have both been pleased to 
find it useful, and have adapted it to suit 
themselves, transforming it, for example, 
from unpretentious paper into solid brass. 
Nevertheless, its ownership is quite unques- 
tioned. It is not only of Shint5 creation, but 
admittedly so. 



THE GOHEI. 245 



II. 



Now it was this go/iei-wand that in conjur- 
ing up the god conjured up unexpectedly 
one day the spirit of the rite. Its exorcism 
was sorely needed, for in spite of boring the 
priests and even bothering the god on the 
subject, nothing but perplexity had come of 
the investigation, when one day it suddenly 
occurred to me that the gohei was always 
present at a possession ; that in every in- 
stance this wand had been put into the 
hands of the man to be possessed prepara- 
tory to the possession, and that he had then 
held it through the trance. Other details 
had varied, but the wand was always there. 
I could recollect no exception to this rule. 
Having once been struck by the coincidence, 
I observed more closely, and to complete 
confirmation of my conjecture. At every 
function, whether at the hands of Ryobuists, 
Shintoists, or Buddhists, there was the wand, 
constant as the trance itself. 

Upon which I asked and got innocent ad- 
mission from the Buddhists that it was a 
necessary detail of the rite, while from Shinto 
I learned the explanation of its presence. 



246 OCCULT JAPAN. 

The fact and its reason may be formulated to- 
gether thus : The gohei-wand is used in every 
divine possession in Japan, without exception, 
as a necessary vehicle for the god's descent. 
Whether the possession take place by Shinto, 
Ryobu, or Buddhist rite, in every instance 
the gohei-wand is put into the hands of the 
man to be possessed at the time the invi- 
tation to the god to descend begins, and 
through it is the god believed to come. It 
is post hoc because propter hoc. The gohei is 
thus the very soul of the rite. 

To add argument to this fact savors of 
supererogation, for the crucial character of 
its circumstantial evidence is patent. As if, 
however, gratuitously to emphasize its impor- 
tance, both faiths festoon the place where 
the descent is to be made with other gohei, 
pendent overhead, for purification. Both 
haraibei and shintai are thus present at the 
function. 

Before the waving of this little wand, all 
the Buddhist pretensions to the cult pale to 
impalpable phantoms. Further discussion 
becomes suddenly vain. One cannot argue 
with a wraith; and if one think to strike 
insubstantiality, he is aware only of the void. 



THE GOHEI. 247 

But as some good souls will still persist in 
believing in spooks, in spite of the jailure 
of the not over-incredulous Society for Psy- 
chical Research to find a single really trust - 
worthy spe cimen, it may be well to lay this 
ghost by a funeral logical rite or two. 

To begin with, then, it is important to 
remember that to believers the means to a 
mystery is the mystery itself. For those 
addicted to such things do not follow them 
as sciences, but as arts. They have inher- 
ited the act embodied in certain actions, and 
the symbols in which it stands enshrined 
are to them essentials to its performance. 
From being so in act, they become so in 
fact. For so potent is faith, that to believe 
in a means as essential to an end is, by 
virtue of that belief alone, to make it so. 

Now a mystery is not a thing a faith is in 
the habit of naively imparting to the first 
man it may chance to buttonhole for pious 
purposes, especially when it is a mystery of 
the utmost significance to itself. Every 
well-organized hierarchy has to keep up 
a certain amount of celestial exclusiveness 
for purposes of self-preservation. Just be- 
cause by prolonged devotion it has secured 



248 OCCULT JAPAN. 

a distant divine recognition is no reason 
why it should minimize this intimacy to oth- 
ers. Anteroom admission to the favor of 
the gods is surely as valuable a privilege as 
a like reception at the hands of the great 
ones of the earth ; and we all know what 
lustre in their own eyes such threshold inti- 
macy casts upon the favored few, even to the 
extent of pretending to make light of it to 
others. Now this divine intimacy is impos- 
ing enough in all conscience when it rests 
simply on the word of the admitted. How 
infinitely more so when confirmed by visible 
action on the part of the gods themselves. 
An introduction to such peculiar privilege is 
not thoughtlessly to be given to everybody. 
It will not do to present profane outsiders to 
one's gods ; still less thus to present one's 
bosom foe. Such an act is nothing short of 
sacerdotal suicide. 

Yet something still more improbable the 
Buddhists would have us believe. For they 
admit getting the gohei from Shinto, and at 
the same time they assert that they taught 
that faith the possession cult. If so, then 
they took three steps to their own destruc- 
tion, each more trance-like, to say the least, 



THE GOHEI. 249 

than its predecessor. First, they parted for 
no consideration whatever with a most valu- 
able possession — simply inestimably so for 
purposes of conversion — to the very folk 
whom they were at the moment doing their 
utmost to convert. Next, they permitted 
these people, once taught, to substitute their 
own sacred symbol as conjurer in the su- 
preme act, a concession which must speedily 
have induced complete oblivion that the cult 
itself had ever been a gift ; and then, to cap 
the climax to their kind self-effacement, they 
actually adopted this, their proselytes' sym- 
bol, for exclusive use themselves. And then 
they ask the world to credit the account. 
One does not know whether to be the more 
astounded at the colossal coolness which can 
put forth such a tale, or at the amazing sim- 
plicity which can suppose others capable of 
believing it. 

Were I merely making an argument in the 
matter I should here rest my case, the con- 
vincing character of this bit of evidence 
alone rendering any other superfluous. But 
as it is an exposition on which I am engaged, 
I go on to some more facts, all in the same 
line. 



25O OCCULT JAPAN. 

To a pro-Buddhist prejudice in the matter, 
the first of these must prove a revelation 
second only in surprise to the last. It is 
this : the very gods the gohei-vt&nd. summons 
turn in its hands state's evidence against it. 
For it is the Shinto gods that descend. Not 
only is it its own gods alone that Shinto 
summons, but the Buddhists also call Shinto 
deities, and of their own pantheon only the 
lower, never the higher, members. To ex- 
plain this unusual fancy for their neighbors' 
gods, combined with a relative disregard for 
the company of their own, the Buddhists 
allege the, to them, comparative unimpor- 
tance of the cult. Such indifferentism is 
perilously near abandonment of their pre- 
vious claims. People are not given to de- 
tecting flatness of flavor in their own fruit. 
If the practice be to them so unimportant 
an affair, why indulge in it at all ? Besides, 
even this lame admission halts at summoning 
the Shinto gods. Doubtless it is most flat- 
tering to the Shint5 deities thus to be called 
on for their opinion by professing outsiders, 
but it would seem quite an inexplicable cre- 
dulity on the part of the Buddhists to do so, 
even among the politest people in the world. 



THE GOHEL 25 I 



III. 



So much shall suffice here for the mute 
evidence of acts. But language has a word 
or two to say on the subject which, as a 
matter of courtesy, it may be well to admit. 
And first in the way of records. 

The Kojiki and the Nihonshoki, known 
also as the Nihongi, are the oldest written 
records of the Japanese people. Compiled, 
the one in a. d. 712, the other in a. d. 720, 
they together constitute the Shinto bible, 
being different gospels, as it were, of much 
the same facts and fictions about the national 
past. Many of the fictions are doubtless 
founded on fact, though exactly how and even 
inexactly when, it would outwit mythology 
itself to state. There is at the beginning 
the usual attempt to make something out 
of nothing in order to account for the cos- 
mos, much of which is probably Chinese. 
Then having got primeval chaos into some- 
thing approaching order, the account gradu- 
ally assumes consistency, till at last it be- 
comes substantially history, of a far-oriental 
kind. As it begins with gods and ends with 
men, the evolution is not of the strictly sci- 



252 OCCUL T JAPAN. 

entific kind, but rather a general devolution 
in keeping with the doctrine of original sin. 
During this abnormal development various 
improbable events occur, some necessary to 
it, some irrelevant. Of course the gods are 
the dei ex machina in the matter ; and it 
takes a long time before the universe gets 
into fairly passable running order, and their 
presence can generally be dispensed with. 
This dispensation, indeed, never wholly takes 
place, and even after the world is going 
along well enough of itself, and the gods 
have formally left the field to their descend- 
ants, they are continually popping in and 
out, just to be sure no mistakes are made. 
One of their favorite methods of appearing 
on the scene is to possess people. Such 
manifestations of themselves were not, if we 
are to trust the histories, very uncommon. 
There are at least three recorded instances, 
and, what is peculiarly to the point, these 
are described with almost the exact detail 
which distinguishes the possessions of to- 
day ; which makes the accounts peculiarly 
interesting ethnologically. We seem to be 
looking down that long vista of the past to 
trances similar to any taking place about us 
at the present time. 



THE GOHEI. 253 

The first incarnation of which mention is 
made took place in the purely heavenly half 
of the history, at the time when the gods 
alone lived in the land. The occasion was 
the unfortunate withdrawal of the Sun-God- 
dess into a cave in consequence of the un- 
seemly conduct of her brother, Susunao, or 
the Impetuous Male. This rude individual 
is the first recorded instance of the enfant 
terrible, and is not unhappily named, I think, 
to express the fact. He was subsequently 
banished to the moon for his improprieties. 
The displeasure of the Sun -Goddess was 
peculiarly distressing to the company of 
heaven, because her withdrawal of itself 
plunged them into utter darkness. They 
accordingly set about concocting a scheme 
to lure her out, the execution of which, as 
given in the Kojiki, reads as follows : — 

"They hung all manner of things upon 
the tree: five hundred jewel-strings of bril- 
liant bent beads to the top branches, an 
eight-sided looking-glass to the middle ones, 
and dark blue and white gohei to the lowest. 
Then his Augustness Jewel August Thing 
took an august gohei in his hand, and Heav- 
enly Small Roof August Thing made repeti- 



254 OCCULT JAPAN. 

tion of some august [i. e. Shinto) prayers, while 
Heavenly Hand Power Male God was sent 
to hide beside the august door. Thereupon 
Heavenly Ugly Face August Thing, using a 
heavenly vine from the Heavenly Incense 
Mountain as shoulder-cord to tuck up her 
sleeves, and making herself a wig of the 
heavenly masa-tree, and tying up a bunch of 
bamboo-grass from the Heavenly Incense 
Mountain to hold in her hand, turned a cask 
bottom up before the door of the heavenly 
rock-house, and treading and stamping upon 
it with her feet became possessed {kamu-ga- 
kari shite). And clutching the clothes from 
about her breast, and pushing down the 
girdle of her skirt, she let her dress fall 
down to her hips. And the Plain of High 
Heaven resounded as the eight hundred 
myriad deities with one accord laughed. 
Thereupon the Heavenly Shining Great Au- 
gust Goddess, hearing the sound, cried out " 
— what is now immaterial, since her curi- 
osity once caught, she herself soon followed. 
The next mention of divine possession 
occurs in the Nihonshoki. It is recorded 
in the reign of the Emperor Sujin, a most 
unlucky monarch, with whom everything went 



THE GO HE I. 255 

wrong. He naturally attributed this to the 
gods, and determined finally to question them 
on the subject. So going out into a certain 
plain he collected the eight hundred myriad 
deities, immaterially speaking, doubtless, and 
asked to have his fortune told. Upon which : 

" At this time a god descended upon the 
princess Yamato-totohi-momoso-hime-no-mi- 
koto, and said (kami-gakarite-iwaku) : ' Why 
is the Emperor troubled in spirit because the 
country is vexed and there is no law in the 
land ? If he diligently worship me and follow 
my commandments the land shall rest in 
peace.' Then the Emperor inquired and said, 
* What god is it that thus instructs me ? ' 
And the god answered, ' I am the god that 
dwelleth within the boundaries of this land, 
the land of Yamato, and my name is Omono- 
nushi-no-kami.' Then receiving reverently 
the instructions of the god, the Emperor 
worshiped diligently according to his com- 
mandments." 

A little after this, in the next reign, the 
reign of the Emperor Suinin, we are told of 
an image that was suddenly possessed by 
the god whose image it was. This also is 
out of the Nihonshoki : — 



256 OCCULT JAPAN. 

" In the third month, in the second year 
of the boar, on the first day, being the day 
of the monkey, the Emperor, taking an 
image of the Heavenly Shining Great August 
Goddess from the Princess Toyosuki-hime- 
no-mikoto, gave it to the Princess Yamato- 
hime-no-mikoto, and charged her, saying, 
' Search me out a place where I may set 
up this image.' So the princess took the 
image and carried it first to Totanosasahata. 
And from thence she journeyed to the land 
of Omi, and, turning eastward, went by way 
of the land of Mino, till she came to the 
country of Ise. Then the Heavenly Shining 
Great August Goddess spake, and instructed 
the Princess Yamato-hime-no-mikoto, say- 
ing, 'This land of Ise, this land of heavenly 
breezes, this land of ever-curling waves, this 
sea-girt shore, is a delectable land. In this 
land will I dwell.' So, according to the 
words of the goddess, was a shrine built 
there to her in the land of Ise." In this 
way were founded the famous shrines of Ise. 

But perhaps the most interesting of all 
the possessions mentioned in either of these 
books are the possessions of the Empress 
Jingo, recorded more or less in both. 



THE GOHEI. 257 

The Empress Jingo was a good deal of a 
man. She was a great deal more of a man 
than her husband, though she was only his 
second wife. She was simply Empress-con- 
sort at first, eventually succeeding her hus- 
band, who died from want of faith, as will 
appear later. Masculine in character, she 
was most feminine in looks. The Nihon- 
shoki speaks of her as exceedingly pretty 
and her father's pet, which latter fact proves 
to my mind that she was a woman of will, 
for I have observed that fathers are usually 
proud of daughters of decision. She it was 
who conquered Korea, in the histories at 
least, and did many other manly acts, be- 
sides giving birth to the Emperor Oj in, after- 
wards canonized as Hachiman, the God of 
War. 

Apparently she was prone to being pos- 
sessed, and ended by being quite intimate 
with deity. Her chronicle is a curious patch- 
work, pieced out, however, fairly complete 
between the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki. 
The Nihonshoki, after some Almanack de 
Gotha work introducing a few rather dry 
domesticities, simply kills her husband, with- 
out offering us any excuse for the deed 



258 OCCULT JAPAN. 

except the apparent unimportance of his life. 
The Kojiki, however, condescends to tell us 
how it happened : — 

"Before that (referring to a digression 
about a certain posthumous name of her son) 
the Empress was divinely possessed {kami- 
yori tamaeriki, lit. got-god-approached). At 
the time when the Emperor, dwelling in the 
Oak Temple in Kyushiu, was about to make 
war upon the land of Kumaso, the Emperor 
played upon the august harp, and Take-no- 
uchi-no-sukune went into the place of inquir- 
ing of the gods {saniwa, lit. sand-court), and 
inquired of them. Then the Empress, be- 
ing divinely possessed (kan-gakari shite), in- 
formed and instructed him, saying, 'To the 
west lieth a land full of all manner of precious 
things from gold and silver upward,' etc., etc. 
This glowing description, of which it were 
needless here to quote more, referred of all 
places in the world to Korea. It is perhaps 
not matter for wonder that the Emperor 
proved skeptical on the subject, and made 
light of the divine information ; upon which 
he was promptly killed by the gods for con- 
tempt of court. After which the Nihonshoki 
takes up the narrative, and tells us that the 



THE GO HE I. 259 

Empress, who seems to have been a pious 
person, was much grieved at the Emperor's 
sudden taking off for doubting the divine 
word, and resolved, woman-like, to know 
about those jewels, a resolve she carried 
out as follows : " Choosing a lucky day, 
she went into the purification shrine and 
became possessed (kannushi to naritamo). 
And this was the manner of it : Giving or- 
ders to Take-no-uchi-no-sukune, she caused 
him to play upon the august harp, and 
calling Nakatomi-on-ikatsu, the August At- 
tendant, she made him the inquirer of the 
god {scmiwa to su). Whereupon he placed 
a thousand cloths and rich cloths upon the 
top and bottom of the harp, and besought 
the god, saying : ' The god that spake on 
a former day to the Emperor, instructing 
him ; what god was it ? I would fain know 
his name.' Then when seven days and seven 
nights had passed the god answered, saying" 
— first what his abode was, and then what 
was his name, and then, in reply to further 
questionings of the saniwa, Nakatomi, gave 
instructions for conquering Korea, which 
had been his object from the beginning. 
The Empress being a very devout body, and 



260 OCCULT JAPAN. 

possibly being influenced slightly by the 
glitter of the prospective jewels, acted on 
his instructions, and with complete success. 
Here, then, we have accounts of posses- 
sions long pre-Buddhist ; their very accounts 
being practically pre-Buddhist themselves. 
For the Kojiki and the Nihonshoki were 
written less than one hundred and forty 
years after Buddhism came to Japan, too 
short a time for it to have draped old 
legends with its own detail. Besides, there 
is not the slightest suspicion that it ever 
tried to do so. The accounts read as real- 
istically Shinto as one could have them do. 
What is more, they read, barring a few 
archaisms, as if recorded of to-day. In 
skeleton the modern procedure is all there. 
In these old Shinto biblical narratives you 
see the same features that you mark in the 
Ryobu-Shint5 trances now. The conserva- 
tism is quite far-orientally complete, which 
is another proof, not only that the thing is 
Shinto, but that the Buddhists brought with 
them from China nothing akin to it. For 
we may be sure the gods would not have 
been behind their people in the great na- 
tional trick of imitation, and had there been 



THE GOHEL 26 1 

any foreigners to copy they would assuredly 
have copied them, and not have stayed 
starchedly Shinto to the present day. 

In addition to the interest of the records 
themselves, the verbal evidence of these 
records is interesting. The words describ- 
ing the possessions are all pure Japanese. 
Many of them are yet comprehensible, being 
in a way grandfathers to the modern terms. 
Kamigakari, of which kamu-gakari and 
kan-gakari are euphonic forms, means god- 
fixed-on. An intransitive verb, it shows the 
spontaneity of the act. This spontaneity of 
deity is further dwelt on by tradition. In 
those good old days the gods descended, it 
is piously taught, of their own initiative, and 
not as now because importuned of man. 
Such seems a true mirror of the fact. For at 
first the act must have been fortuitive and 
sporadic. It could only have been later that 
men learned to lassoo deity at will. The 
modern term kami-oroski, causing the god 
to descend, marks the subsequent business 
stage of the practice. Indeed, this domes- 
tication of deity, this taming of once wild 
trances, is not the least peculiar attribute 
of the far-eastern branch of the subject. 



262 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Among every people divine trances have 
taken place, but to make of the accidental 
and fortuitous the certain and the regular, 
to develop the casual communion into a sys- 
tematic cult, shows a degree of familiarity 
with the subject peculiarly Japanese. 

The word kami, which appears both in the 
ancient and modern expressions, is highly 
suggestive. For kami refers exclusively to 
Shinto gods ; Buddhist gods being always 
known as hotoke. Kami originally meant, 
and in certain uses still means, " top," or 
"above," and therefore was applied to the 
supreme beings. It is the same kami that 
figures in kami the hair of the head or top- 
knot, and that appears in the expression o 
kami san, your wife, lit. Mrs. Upper, used 
when addressing the middle classes. Even 
its sinico-Japanese equivalent shin shows the 
same significance. For it never referred in 
China to the Buddhist gods. The two char- 
acteristics of which it is composed mean 
" declare, say ; " whereas the character for 
hotoke, a Buddhist god, means simply " not 
man." Whether trance-revelation lies hidden 
in this "declare, say," is another matter. 

Another word in the bibles is worth a 



THE GOHEL 263 

note, the word saniwa. The characters with 
which it is written mean " sand- court." 
What that means has nonplused the com- 
mentators, as Mr. Chamberlain tells us. It 
has not foiled the priests. They explain it 
satisfactorily, if perhaps ex-post-factorily, as 
the god-interviewer, what is now commonly 
called the maeza. The explanation of the 
priests is at least explicable. For "sand- 
court " has the same impersonality about it, 
the designation of the place in lieu of the 
person, which is so curiously conspicuous in 
maeza) the seat-in-front. That it appears to 
make nonsense in personal English does not 
imply that it makes nonsense in impersonal 
Japanese. 

I will now give, from the Nihonshoki, two 
or three accounts of Kngadachi, or the Or- 
deal by Boiling Water, which will show that 
the miracles are as old as the incarnations, 
and as purely Shinto. The first of these 
ordeals was undergone in the reign of the 
Emperor Ojin, son to the Empress Jingo. 

" In the ninth year (of his reign), in the 
spring, in the fourth month, the Emperor 
sent Take-no-uchi-no-sukune to Kyushiu to 
take account of the people. Now at that 



264 OCCULT JAPAN. 

time Umashi-uchi-no-sukune, the younger 
brother of Take-no-uchi-no-sukune, wishing 
to rid himself of his brother, laid charge 
against him before the Emperor, saying : 
' It has come to our ears, O Emperor, that 
Take-no-uchi-no-sukune is desirous of pos- 
sessing Japan, and goeth about secretly to 
stir up the people of Kyushiu against the 
Emperor. Then, when he shall have es- 
tranged the land of Kyushiu and called in 
the Three States (Korea), he purposeth to 
seize upon Japan.' Hearing these words, 
the Emperor sent a messenger to Take-no- 
uchi-no-sukune, to put him to death. Then 
Take-no-uchi-no-sukune made answer to the 
messenger, saying : ' I am not double-minded, 
but true to the Emperor whom I serve. 
What is, then, the crime of which I am ac- 
cused ? And if guiltless, why should I suffer 
death ? ' 

" Now there was living in Iki a certain 
man named Ataeno-maneko. This man 
greatly resembled Take-no-uchi-no-sukune. 
And being troubled in spirit that Take-no- 
uchi-no-sukune should be put to death with- 
out just cause, he said unto him : 'All Japan 
knoweth thee to be a true man and a faithful 



THE GOHEL 26$ 

one to our Lord the Emperor. Now, there- 
fore, fleeing hence secretly, get thee to our 
Lord the Emperor and justify thyself be- 
fore him. And furthermore men say that 
I greatly resemble thee. So, therefore, in 
place of thee, will I die, and thus show all 
men that thy heart is pure before our Lord 
the Emperor.' Whereupon he slew himself 
with his sword. 

"Then Take-no-uchi-no-sukune was sad at 
heart, and, secretly leaving Kyushiu, took 
ship and came round by the southern ocean 
to the port of Kii, and landed there. And 
from thence he came, after much trouble, to 
the court of the Emperor, and told the Em- 
peror concerning his innocence. Then the 
Emperor, perceiving some evil thing had 
been done, called both Take-no-uchi-no- 
sukune and Umashi-uchi-no-sukune before 
him. Thereupon each told his own story, 
and there was no way to tell the true from 
the false. Then the Emperor commanded 
that prayer should be offered to the Heav- 
enly Gods and to the Earthly Gods, and 
an ordeal by boiling water made {ktcgada- 
chi sesliimu). Whereupon Take-no-uchi-no- 
sukune and Umashi-uchi-no-sukune went 



266 OCCULT JAPAN. 

together to the banks of the river Shiki and 
performed the ordeal (kugadachi sit) ; and 
Take-no-uchi-no-sukune was justified by the 
gods. Then Take-no-uchi-no-sukune, taking 
his sword, struck down Umashi-uchi-no- 
sukune, and would have slain him, but the 
Emperor commanded that he should be par- 
doned and handed over to the Arae family 
in Kii." 

The next example occurred in the reign of 
the Emperor Inkyo. "In the fourth year, 
in the autumn, in the ninth month, being the 
year of the snake, on the first day of the 
month, being the day of the bull, the Em- 
peror gave instructions and commanded, say- 
ing : 'Anciently were the people ruled in 
peace, and family names were never con- 
founded, but now in this, the fourth year of 
our reign, do the lower and the higher 
among the people contend with one another 
in the matter, and the people know no peace ; 
either, peradventure, making mistake, have 
they lost their proper family names, or else, 
taking of forethought names above their sta- 
tion, they have turned them to their own 
use ; and there is no law in the land. Now, 
perchance, it is we who are lacking in wis- 



THE GOHEI. 267 

dom. How, then, may we correct our mis- 
take? Do you, attendants, taking counsel 
together, advise us in the matter.' Then the 
attendants, with one voice, answered: 'O Em- 
peror ! if pointing out the mistakes and cor- 
recting the wrong, the Emperor settles this 
matter of family names, we, even risking 
death, will tell the Emperor the truth.' So, 
in the year of the monkey, the Emperor 
gave instructions, saying : ' The Lords, High 
Dignitaries, and other officers, down to the 
governors, have together made answer, and 
said : Verily the generations of the Em- 
peror and the generations of his people are 
both likewise descended from heaven. Yet, 
since the day when the three bodies (heaven, 
earth, and humanity) were one, many years 
have passed, and from one name now many 
descendants have spread abroad and taken 
many family names, and it is not easy to tell 
the true from the false. Therefore, let all 
the people bathe and purify themselves, and 
let each take oath before the gods to per- 
form the ordeal by boiling water {kugadachi 
su).' So the priest gave orders, saying, 
'At the end of the hill called the Amakashi 
hill, let an iron pot (kugae) be placed, and let 



268 OCCULT JAPAN. 

all the people be collected and gathered 
together there. Then shall they that speak 
the truth pass through the ordeal unharmed, 
but they that speak lies shall surely suffer.' 

" Thereupon all the people tying up their 
clothes by shoulder-cords and going to the 
iron pot performed the ordeal by boiling 
water (kugadachi su). And those that spake 
the truth were by virtue of their verity un- 
harmed ; but those that spake lies suffered. 
Therefore did the rest of the liars greatly 
fear and run away before ever they came to 
the hill. And from that time family names 
settled themselves of their own accord, and 
there was not one liar left in the land." A 
result which doubtless satisfactorily accounts 
for the present almost painful veracity of the 
Japanese people. 

At the dawn of history, then, we find both 
possession of things and possession of per- 
sons already a part of the nation's mytholo- 
gic heritage. Almost as soon as the gods 
were they began thus to visit one another. 
Then so soon as their earthly descendants 
appeared upon the scene they proceeded to 
visit them. Deity and humanity have con- 
tinued on calling terms ever since. 



THE GOHEI. 269 

Thus we see, first, how crucial, and then 
how exhaustive, is the proof that this divine 
possession cult is purely Shinto, and that all 
the Buddhists have done is to set upon it in 
the most conclusive way the seal of their 
appreciation. It pains me to prick this Bud- 
dhist bubble, blown of filching other people's 
soap. But I feel the less compunction about 
doing so for the fact that Buddhism has 
enough beautiful ones of its own fashioning, 
round and perfect philosophic films that 
catch and reflect the eternal light in iri- 
descent hues sufficient to charm many mil- 
lions of men. Emotionally its tenets do not 
at bottom satisfy us occidentals, flirt with 
them as we may. Passivity is not our pas- 
sion, preach it as we are prone to do each 
to his neighbor. Scientifically pessimism is 
foolishness and impersonality a stage in de- 
velopment from which we are emerging, not 
one into which we shall ever relapse. As a 
dogma it is unfortunate, doing its devotee in 
the deeper sense no good, but it becomes 
positively faulty when it leads to practical 
ignoring of the mine and thine, and does 
other people harm. 



THE SHRINES OF ISE. 




Y first meeting with the gods, upon 
the top of Ontake, had been strangely- 
unexpected ; my last sign from them 
was destined to be no less so. It took place 
in an utterly dissimilar yet even more im- 
probable place — the Shrines of Ise. 

If, when buds first stir with dreams of 
blossom amid the forbidding April of our 
New England year, a man could quietly be 
spirited away from doubt, delay, and disap- 
pointment to a certain province of what is 
still old Japan, he would find himself in what 
he would take for fairyland. Over the whole 
countryside and far up its background of 
hills glow cloud-like masses of pink-white 
bloom, while upon all the country roads 
carnival crowds of men, women, and children 
journey gayly along, chanting as they go, 
beneath the canopy of blossom. It is the 
great Shint5 pilgrimage to the Shrines of 



THE SHRINES OF ISE. 27 1 

Ise that he is gazing on, made every spring 
by three hundred thousand folk at the time 
when the cherries blow. 

Up the winding street of the town of Ya- 
mada, the house-eaves on either hand one 
long line of fluttering pilgrim flags, the 
gay throng wends its rollicking way, and, 
crossing a curved parapeted bridge, enters a 
strangely neat park in the centre of a little 
valley shut in by thickly wooded slopes. At 
the farther end of the open an odd sort of 
skeleton arch makes portal to a carefully kept 
primeval forest. Through this ghost of a 
gateway the pilgrims pass by a broad gravelly 
path into a natural nave of cryptomeria, the 
huge trunks straight as columns and so tall 
that distance itself seems to taper them 
to where their tops touch in arch far over- 
head. Down aisles of half light on the 
sides show here and there the shapes of 
plain unpainted buildings, with roofs feet- 
deep in thatch, and curiously curved pro- 
jecting rafters ; while under the great still 
trees the path winds solemnly on through 
a second portal, -and then a third, to the foot 
of a flight of broad stone steps, up which it 
ascends to a gateway in the centre of one 



272 OCCULT JAPAN. 

side of a plain wooden palisade. The gate- 
way's doors stand open, but a white curtain, 
hanging from the lintel in their stead, 'hides 
all view beyond. 

In front of the curtain lies a mat sprinkled 
with pennies. Before it each pilgrim pauses, 
lays aside his staff, takes off his travel robes, 
and tossing his mite to lie there beside its 
fellows, claps his hands, and bows his head in 
prayer. Then, his adoration done, he slowly 
turns, takes up again his robe and staff, and 
goes the way he came. For this is the goal 
to his long pilgrimage. 

That curtain marks his bourne. Beyond 
the veil none but the Mikado and the spe- 
cial priests may ever go. Yet every now and 
then a gracious breeze gently wafts the cur- 
tain a little to one side, and for an instant 
gives the faithful glimpse of a pebbly court, 
a second gateway, and, screened by pale 
within pale of palisades, more plain wooden 
buildings with strangely raftered roofs, re- 
puted counterparts of the primeval dwellings 
of the race. And this is all that man may 
ever see of the great Shrines of Ise, chief 
Mecca of the Shinto faith. 

If with the mind's eye the pilgrim pene- 



THE SHRINES OF ISE. 273 

trates no farther than his feet may pass, he 
may well say with the disappointed tourist 
whom Chamberlain quotes in the guide- 
book, in warning to such as would visit 
these shrines : " There is nothing to see ; 
and they won't let you see it." 

II. 

Indeed, materially, there is little within 
save the eight petaled mirror, known by 
tradition to be there, emblem of the Great 
Goddess of the Sun. 

But there is something there not yet down 
in the guide-book ; not even fully appreciated 
by the priests themselves. For revelation 
comes only to those who stand ready to per- 
ceive it. It chanced to me in this wise. 

Never having made the pilgrimage to these 
famous shrines, I was minded, after my inti- 
macy with deity, to do so ; and, accordingly, 
under the kind auspices of the high-priest 
of the Shinshiu sect, was properly accred- 
ited to the priests. 

The Shrines, technically so called, consist 
of two congeries of temples inclosed by 
elaborate series of palisades and bosomed in 
grand old parks. One is known as the 



274 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Geku or Outer Temple ; the other as the 
Naiku or Inner Temple ; in ordinary par- 
lance, the Gekusan and Naikusan. 

An immemorial tradition requires that all 
the more sacred buildings shall be torn down 
and exactly rebuilt again once every twenty 
years. For this purpose each is provided 
with an alternate site which, similar to and 
by the side of the one occupied at the mo- 
ment, awaits, vacant, its turn to be used. 
There are three such sites at each shrine ; 
one belonging to the main temple and two 
to smaller temples a short way off through 
the woods. 

The two main temples are dedicate, that 
at the Naiku to Ama-terasu-o-mi-kami, the 
Sun-Goddess, and that at the Geku to Toyo- 
ake-bime-no-kami, the goddess of food. For- 
merly the Geku was dedicate, as Satow, who 
made a study of non-esoteric Shinto, tells us, 
to Kuni-toko-tachi-no-mikoto ; both the for- 
mer and the present incumbent being deities 
connected with the earth. With these chief 
gods are associated several subordinate di- 
vinities. At the Naikusan these are : Ta- 
jikara-o-no-kami, the strong-hand-great-god, 
he who pulled the Sun-Goddess out of the 



THE SHRINES OF ISE. 2*]$ 

cave whither she had retired displeased ; and 
a divine ancestress of the Imperial house. 
At the Gekusan they are Ninigi-no-mikoto, 
grandson to the Sun-Goddess and ancestor 
of the Mikado, and two deities who accompa- 
nied him when he descended from heaven 
to rule over the earth, that is, Japan. 

Of the lesser temples nothing is said in 
the guide-book, because next to nothing was 
known about them. Even the custodians 
themselves are not aware of all they guard, 
though they know sufficient to have put any 
one who had had knowledge of Shinto's eso- 
teric side upon the discovery. But this side, 
as we have seen, was not suspected. 

Now, it happened in the course of my 
visit that, under the guidance of the priests, 
we came through the wood upon one of the 
two smaller temples, and I asked them what 
it was called. Ara-mi-tama-no-miya, they 
answered, the Temple of the Rough-August- 
Soul. Having some acquaintance with the 
ways of the gods, I began to suspect, only 
to have my suspicions verified. The Rough- 
August-Soul turned out to be the rough 
spirit of the Sun-goddess, — not her usual 
spirit, they explained, but her spirit when 



276 OCCULT JAPAN. 

she possesses people. Once, they said, she 
had possessed a daughter of the Imperial 
house, many centuries ago, upon this very 
spot. Here, then, was a strange temple, 
indeed ; a temple dedicated to a possessory 
spirit; possibly something without a coun- 
terpart on earth, save for another like it at 
the Gekusan, which I found in the course of 
the same day. 

To the Ise priests all this was but a 
half-understood tradition. For their sect is 
esoteric no longer. They know nothing per- 
sonally of the practice of possession. All 
the greater their unwitting witness to the 
fact ; and to the still more important fact 
which this one proves. For it proves that 
in early days the possession cult was com- 
mon to all Shintd, and not as now the heir- 
loom only of certain sects. 

So completely was possession once an 
integral part of the Shinto faith, that it 
erected these temples to the possessory 
spirits. Nothing could well testify more 
deeply to belief in their existence, and no- 
thing seem to bring them home more closely 
to their devotees than this fashioning of an 



THE SHRINES OF ISE. 2*]*] 

earthly pavilion for their temporary sojourn. 
Among all the strange details of this god- 
possession cult, this, perhaps, is the strangest 
— these temples to possessing spirits. 





NOUMENA. 




AVING seen these spirits, the next 
thing is, if possible, to see through 
them. For after establishing first 
their existence, and, secondly, their identity, 
it becomes interesting to know their essence. 
In order to discover this, we may best begin 
by considering our own spirit or self. 

The idea of self, religiously known as one's 
soul or spirit, presents itself to us under 
three aspects : as a feeling about ourselves ; 
as a feeling about others as affecting our- 
selves ; as a feeling about others independ- 
ently of ourselves. The first we call the 
sense of self ; the second, the personality of 
another ; the last, simply a man's individ- 
uality. 

Now, to begin with, every one has a pri- 
vate conviction that his sense of self is as 
strong as any one else's, just as he is pri- 



NOUMENA. 279 

vately persuaded that his feelings generally 
are as praiseworthily poignant as his neigh- 
bor's. Nevertheless, his equally infallible 
estimate of others may hint to him that 
this is possibly a pleasing personal delusion, 
since in those about him he perceives very 
clearly that in strength of selfhood man 
varies markedly from man. Some men af- 
fect him instantly and indescribably as of 
strong personality; others as of a feeble 
one. Scanning them critically for objective 
proof of this subjective feeling of his toward 
them, he finds in their behavior unmistak- 
able signs that it is founded on fact. He 
notices that the feeble brother unconsciously 
plays chameleon to all he meets, while the 
positive person seems largely sufficient unto 
himself. In short, it becomes perfectly ap- 
parent that men differ as much in selfhood 
as they do in, say, artistic taste. 

Just as men of any one community differ 
thus among themselves, so whole communi- 
ties contrast with one another in the same 
way. The French and the Anglo-Saxons 
offer us an instance at our very elbow. 
What is more, both sides to the antithesis 
recognize the difference perfectly, and apply 



280 OCCULT JAPAN. 

derogatory epithets to it in the other. Ce 
grand original d' Anglais heartily despises 
those monkeys the French, and knows not 
at which he stands the more aghast, the 
awful sansculottism of their institutions or 
the shocking manner in which they unbosom 
themselves to the first comer. 

Another generic instance is even more 
ready to our hand. We do not have to go 
abroad to find it. For it is found world-wide 
in femininity. So universal is it, and so 
bound up with the question of trances, that 
it deserves mention here ; especially as I do 
not recall having seen it scientifically recog- 
nized. It is this, — that self is what, psychi- 
cally, peculiarly distinguishes the sexes. In 
woman there is a comparative absence of 
Ego. 

With regard to a want of it in woman, 
doubtless there are persons who will promptly 
and indignantly deny the fact ; certainly all 
those who are trying their best to-day to 
make of woman an inferior kind of man may 
be trusted to do so. But woman is altogether 
too valuable as she is to be thus disposed of, 
and it is precisely in her relative lack of self 
that her value lies. This it is that makes 



NOUMENA. 28l 

her the almost unmitigated blessing she is. 
For it is in her direct relations with man 
that this quality of hers comes out conspic- 
uous, first as wife, and then as mother. 

To how many men, I wonder, did it ever 
occur what an upsetting sensation it would 
be to change one's name at marriage. To 
be known by one name, to speak it, hear it, 
write it, read it, from the time one first 
remembered one's self, through all those 
years when habits are formed and crystal- 
lized, and then, presto ! to be known by, 
speak, hear, write, read, another one ever 
after. Such metamorphosis would certainly 
give self-centered man a shock. Yet the 
fair sex take their maiden electrocution 
without a quiver. Nevertheless, words are 
very telling things. It is compliments, not 
good-will, that pay us the most poignant 
after-calls; just as it is insults, not injuries, 
that stick. All the more so, then, in the 
case of that word which of all words is most 
one's self. To change that would, to hard- 
ened man, seem dangerously like parting 
with a part of himself. 

Precursor of change it actually proves to 
be with woman. Change of name, to which 



282 OCCULT JAPAN. 

the maiden takes so kindly, turns out but 
exponent of the change of thought in her 
that follows it. To a great extent the wife 
merges her self in her husband's. She adopts 
his interests, acquires his dislikes, echoes his 
opinions. In the usual case, his intellectual 
property, in short, becomes hers. As a small 
offset, doubtless, to these acquisitions, her 
material property became his. 

She shows the same self-obliteration as 
mother. A woman lives for and in her off- 
spring in a way quite impossible for a man. 
A father may care as much for his children, 
but he cannot sink his own personality in 
theirs as a mother may and does. Her 
thought centres in them as naturally as his 
centres in himself, with a like absence of all 
intention in the process. 

Thus in both of the two most important 
relations of her life a woman shows a disre- 
gard and a sacrifice of herself which finds 
no corresponding counterpart in man. Man 
praises her for it, which is tantamount to 
praising her for being a woman. For in her 
the action is neither noble nor ignoble; it 
simply is. It is also simply normal that man 
should appear a very selfish animal by com- 
parison. 



NO U MEN A. 283 

Noticeable as these differences in the self 
are, they are as nothing compared with the 
contrast that confronts an Anglo-Saxon in 
the Japanese race. Its indirect manifesta- 
tions are so striking that they have found 
embodiment in aphorism. The well-worn 
epigram that the Japanese are the French 
of the far East really rests on this. So does, 
also, the less trite one that Japan is the fem- 
inine half of the world. For her delicacy, 
her daintiness, and her dignity instantly 
suggest to our more coarse, more direct, 
more original mind something of the fair 
sex. An etiquette of soul, I can hear some 
one phrase it. Certainly in emotion both go 
through the world gloved, but the resem- 
blance rests on something below the surface. 
Very different as are femininity and far- 
orientalism in most things, there is strangely 
enough in both a relative absence of self. 

Japan is at present engaged in making the 
resemblance evident in an interesting if ob- 
jectionable manner. When a woman once 
lets go her old rules of conduct, she will go 
pretty much any lengths in the new. Just 
as a fine woman will make even fine men 
blush, so a low one will stagger even her 



284 OCCULT JAPAN. 

male associates. Impulse possesses her for 
its own. There is in her a capacity for self- 
abandonment to an idea impossible to man. 
Lady Macbeth, once started, outdoes my 
lord in crime. She knows no hindering 
regard for self, no ghostly shapes of other 
thoughts to rise and cry to this one " Halt ! 
enough ! " So Japan. Decorous as was old 
Japan, young Japan, inoculated of foreign 
fancy, will cause even the rough and ready 
foreigner to start. Just as politeness stood 
personified — one may almost say petrified — 
in a Japanese gentleman of the old school, 
so rudeness incarnate jostles you in his son. 
A greater contrast could scarcely be offered 
than that between the pageant of an old- 
time Japanese setting out upon a journey 
and a modern Japanese arrival from one by 
train ; the polite eternity of self-deprecatory 
bows of the one, the scramble for the wicket 
of the other, where man, woman, and child 
bump and hustle their neighbors with an 
indifferent rudeness that, in any more per- 
sonal land, would cause several free fights on 
the spot. That it does not do so here shows 
that though politeness has gone, personality 
has not yet come. Indeed, the impersonal 



NOUMENA. 285 

character of the hustle is something which 
may be felt ; for it is as devoid of subjective 
sensibility as of altruistic regard. Imper- 
sonality stands patent in the very touch of 
it. It seems subtly to embody the distinc- 
tion hinted at in the injunction of the topi- 
cal refrain, " Don't push ; just shove." 

II. 

Furthermore, this selfhood is a force. 
We feel other people's personality in direct 
effect upon ourselves, and we perceive and, 
in a way, even feel the effect of our person- 
ality upon others. We also notice similar 
inter-effects between two third persons. 
Like all other forces, this force acts inevit- 
ably, often quite unconsciously ; and fatally 
produces its results when not opposed by 
counter forces. Married couples give us 
striking every-day instances of it. The 
happy pair grow monotonously like each 
other, even to the extent of acquiring a 
certain family resemblance. The wife be- 
comes a replica of her husband, and the 
husband, to a certain extent, a duplicate of 
his wife, although the effect is more marked 
on the woman. As the world is constituted, 



286 OCCULT JAPAN. 

it is fortunate for domesticity that mutual 
transformation is the rule, since otherwise 
it may be doubted if the divorce court would 
be the exception. 

But such inter-affection is no monopoly of 
matrimony. Each one of us is continually 
impressing, or being impressed by, others in 
proportion to the strength of our respective 
selves. Originality marks the height of the 
one, imitation the depth of the other. The 
action is commonly unconscious at the time, 
and only recognized afterwards. The fact 
is that character is contagious. All men go 
through life more or less inoculated thus of 
others. Boswell's very acute case of Dr. 
Johnson, pathologic as it was, is but an ag- 
gravated instance of what is not without a 
parallel about us every day. Plenty of men 
contract effective admirations, which they 
carry with them more or less through life. 
And we none of us wholly escape contagion, 
both good and bad. Whence the importance 
of carefully choosing one's friends. For to 
have a sufficiently violent attack of one 
person insures, for the time being, practical 
immunity from another. To such an extent 
are we all chameleons in mind. 



NOUMENA. 287 

That one self has this effect on its fel- 
lows hints at a common essence pervading 
them all. It suggests one great imperson- 
ality of spirit underlying our several personal 
embodiments of it, a certain cosmic, com- 
munistic character for the soul. It is for- 
tunate there is such mutual influence be- 
tween men. Were it not so, this isolated 
globe would be a still more isolated spot ; 
love would instantly fly out of the window, 
and friendship itself be put out of doors. 

Minds differ greatly in their power of 
thus impregnating other minds. But it is 
especially a quality of the male mind as 
compared with the female one. The one 
is original and forceful ; the other receptive 
and self-adapting. The one imitates, the 
other adopts. 

Personality, or a man's mental force upon 
his fellows, is also in a way measure of the 
mental energy of the man. 

For we meet personalities that repel us as 
well as ones that attract ; personalities, even, 
that do not affect us beyond a recognition 
that they are, and that they do affect, our 
neighbors. We are, therefore, conscious of 
personality as such ; in some sort, we even 
gauge its amount. 



288 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Now the faculty of being influenced by 
other people the Japanese possess to a mar- 
velous degree. Fundamentally unoriginal, 
they have always shown a genius for self- 
adaptation. They are at present engaged 
in exemplifying their capacity upon a whole- 
sale national scale. 

It is hardly exaggeration to say that Japan 
at this moment is affording the rest of the 
world the spectacle of the most stupendous 
hypnotic act ever seen, nothing less than the 
hypnotization of a whole nation, with its 
eyes open. Forty million of folk there are 
now innocent freaks of foreign suggestion. 
It is not simply the imitating of foreign 
customs, but the instant unassimilated char- 
acter of the invitation that stamps the na- 
tional state of mind as kin to hypnosis, and 
gives to both their cousinly touch of carica- 
ture. The new idea is adopted with little 
or no attempt at adaptation. Such sublime 
disregard of congruity shows the hypnotic 
completeness with which it is received. In 
consequence, Tokyo is now one vast public 
platform, in which nature is giving an exhi- 
bition of ideal force. Combinations in cos- 
tume as beautifully incompatible as any the 



NOUMENA. 289 

hypnotized subject can be induced to adopt 
are at large on its streets, worn in the two 
cases from the same motive, unreasoned re- 
sponse to stimulus from without ; whence 
the irrationality of the result. Nor do the 
other subjects see anything ludicrous in it 
all. 

The action may be said to begin, but by 
no means to stop, with costume. Customs, 
from top to toe, are undergoing the same 
foreign-motived transmogrification. The im- 
itation pot-hat and accompanying aura of 
billycockism sit no less comically upon a 
kimono and cloven socks than does a mod- 
ern Tokyo court of justice upon an old- 
fashioned Japanese case. 

Hypnotoidal imitation is no new trait of 
these people. They showed the same pro- 
clivity in just the same way more than a 
millennium ago. China was the operator 
then, as the western world is the operator 
now. Susceptibility to suggestion lies at the 
root of the race. 



29O OCCULT JAPAN. 

III. 

Not only can one self thus sway another, 
but from prehistoric times men have be- 
lieved that one self could actually oust 
another and act in its stead. The dispos- 
sessing self has been variously deemed a 
deity, devil, or disembodied spirit — embod- 
ied spirits being apparently less eager to 
leave their quarters. But whatever its moral 
character, it has been held to be every whit 
as existent as the poor devil it dispossessed. 
Among all peoples we have instances of per- 
sons thus possessed by gods, goblins, and 
others, instances cropping up all over the 
world, from the earliest ages down to the 
present day. The character of the possess- 
ing spirit has, however, varied with singular 
complacency to suit the opinions of the per- 
sons it possessed. In a simple society that 
favored the idea, the visitant has boldly pro- 
claimed himself a god ; in communities 
where this assumption was considered arro- 
gant, he has contented himself with the 
more modest role of devil ; while, finally, in 
these latter days, he has been fain to put up 
with being the spirit of an Indian brave or 
other worthy too insignificant to dispute. 



NOUMENA. 29I 

It is scarcely surprising, perhaps, that 
these possessing spirits should have seemed 
actual beings, seeing that to common sense 
they are such, inasmuch as they rigorously 
pass all the tests by which we cognize per- 
sonality and know one man from his neigh- 
bor, just as rigorously as the unfortunates 
they dispossess. This seemingly astounding 
statement is easily shown to be undeniable. 
Not only to the simple, superficial eye do 
the manifestations comport themselves like 
distinct personalities ; they do the like when 
gauged by all the criteria we are wont to 
apply. For how do we know people about 
us for distinct individualities ? We know 
them psychically by the fact that each 
seems conscious of himself and of his own 
emotions, thoughts, and memories, as being 
his own, and as not being anybody else's. 
The same is true of these spirits. Each is 
evidently conscious of itself, and conscious 
of the distinction between itself and all 
other selves, the man, in whose body it is, 
included. It has its own emotions which 
are not his ; its own thoughts, which are not 
his ; its own memories, which are not his. 
It not only denies that it is he ; it really 



292 OCCULT JAPAN. 

knows nothing of all those states of con- 
sciousness which alone are he. Except as 
an outsider, it neither knows him, nor he it. 

It does not, of course, follow from the 
undeniable fact of its distinct psychical ex- 
istence that it is either a god or a devil. To 
jump to this conclusion is a quite unwarrant- 
able assumption of divinity. But the imma- 
teriality of the god does not invalidate the 
actuality of the so-called spirit. Because 
Smith may erroneously be called Jones, 
does not jeopardize the existence of Smith, 
though it may considerably imperil the exist- 
ence of Jones. 

The reconciliation of these two separate 
selves consists, as we shall see later, in a 
certain denial of self altogether. 

Now, besides revealing so much, common 
to all manifestations, these Shint5 ones re- 
veal indirectly considerably more. In the 
first place, they disclose the fact that the 
Japanese race is very easily possessed. 
They do this, first, by their amount, and 
secondly, as significantly, by their character. 

Their quantity we have seen to be some- 
thing enormous. It is safe to say that no 
other nation of forty millions of people has 



NOUMENA. 293 

ever produced its parallel. For not only is 
each form surprisingly common, but there 
are such a surprising number of forms. 
There is intentional possession, and posses- 
sion unintentional ; possession by the media- 
tion of the church, and possession immedi- 
ately by the devil ; beneficent possession by 
dead men, and malevolent possession by live 
beasts. There is, in short, possession by 
pretty much every kind of creature, except 
by other living men. 

This omission is highly significant. For 
it shows that no Japanese personality of itself 
has proved potent enough thus to affect its 
fellows ; from which it instantly follows that 
the great extent possession has reached in 
Japan is not due to an excess of personality, 
but to a lack of it. As collateral evidence of 
this, is the fact that mesmerism, hypnotism, 
and the like, were unknown in Japan till 
introduced there by the western wond ; ab- 
sent, not from dearth of subjects, but from 
dearth of hypnotizers. 

Even more subtly significant is the quality 
of the possession. Fortuitous, of course, at 
first, god-possession in Japan has passed 
from the spontaneous into the systematic 



294 OCCULT JAPAN. 

stage. From being wild, the possessing 
spirits have become tame. Deity has been 
domesticated. Originally a voluntary act of 
god upon involuntary man, possession has 
become practically an involuntary divine 
acquiescence to human constrainment. The 
lightning, in short, has been turned into ser- 
viceable electricity. 

This constrainment of deity is no new- 
thing there. It had already come about in 
prehistoric times, as the Kojiki and Nihon- 
shoki show. Since then it has been more 
and more systematized till it has now grown 
into a regular business, done as a matter of 
course. Comment on this is needless. 

The trance itself tells the same story, in 
the ease with which the possession is ef- 
fected. For the closer the normal state lies 
to the abnormal one, the less the wrench in 
passing from the one to the other, and the 
more seemingly natural the latter when en- 
tered. Now compared with mediumistic 
trances, the Shinto possessions are decent, 
gentlemanly affairs. There is, indeed, the 
initial throe and the subsequent quiver, but 
the one is not an epileptic portal to a gen- 
eral epileptic appearance throughout, which 



NOUMENA. 295 

so disgusts a looker-on in possessions by 
mediums. The Shinto gods may be dull, 
but they are at least decorous, whereas the 
mediumistic spirits are most undesirable 
company. And this in spite of the fact 
that in America the subjects are usually 
women, from whom one would expect more 
ladylike behavior. 

For to be easily controlled abnormally is 
as much a characteristic of woman as to be 
easily influenced normally. Spirits appar- 
ently have always been perfectly aware of 
this. From the earliest times they have 
shown a pardonable preference for possess- 
ing her. The divinely inspired prophetess 
was a regular appurtenance of ancient re- 
ligions. And that the spirits are still as 
partial to her as ever is shown by the present 
preponderance of female mediums. For that 
the female monopoly of the business is due 
to natural capacity, and not simply to sur- 
plusage of the sex, is hinted at by the host 
of shams which the apparently lucrative 
character of the business is able to support. 

Hypnotism tells the same story. In spite 
of authoritative statements to the contrary, 
women are naturally more hypnotizable, 



296 OCCULT JAPAN. 

than men. That the opposite has been 
stated to be the case would seem to be due 
to the not uncommon fallacy of not suffi- 
ciently simplifying the experiments. For 
there are two factors that enter into the re- 
sult beside the skill of the operator : the 
natural capacity of the subject and the de- 
gree to which he is made unconsciously to 
cooperate to his own suppression. Indeed, 
just as no one may be hypnotized against 
his will, so in all cases the subject really 
hypnotizes himself. The art of the operator 
simply consists in getting him, more or less 
unwittingly, to do this. The greater the 
natural aptitude of the subject, the less the 
art necessary in the operator. To get the 
best experiments, therefore, we should elim- 
inate as much as may be the latter's skill. 
The tyro of an hypnotist is thus the man 
whose experiments are really to the point ; 
and every tyro in this art of recreating per- 
sonality knows that, unlike the original crea- 
tor of it, "his prentice hand" he tries on 
"woman," not "man," because thus he 
stands the greater chance of succeeding. 

Woman's superior capacity for being pos- 
sessed shows itself even among the Japanese. 



NOUMENA. 297 

The Nichiren Buddhists, with praiseworthy 
astuteness, employ women as vehicles for the 
divine descent for this very reason, and the 
resulting trance is so easily entered as some- 
times to pass counterfeit for a sham. 

The French display a like proneness to 
altro-possession. Had they not been rela- 
tively easily influenced, Mesmer would not 
have failed of a livelihood in Vienna to be- 
come the rage in Paris ; nor would Char- 
cot and Nancy have been the pioneer names 
of modern hypnotism. For an art does not 
become the vogue among those who have 
no natural aptitude for it. Nature divorces 
such incompatibility of temper. Priority of 
practice is thus the best proof of fitness. 

Now it is these same three classes of 
mind, the far-oriental, the feminine and the 
French, different as they otherwise are, that 
we saw to be relatively so impersonal. Per- 
sonality, then, appears to be the opposite 
pole to proneness to possession. Spirits of 
this world and of the next would seem to 
have a reciprocatory action in their posses- 
sion of the human body ; the more man the 
less god. This suggests that the qualitative 
difference between selves is in some sort a 



298 OCCULT JAPAN. 

quantitative one. Self would appear to be 
a something capable of more or less ; inas- 
much as a man who is not much himself at 
most finds it more facile to become some one 
else on occasion ; an instance of the general 
principle that it is easier to introduce a 
substance into a comparative void than into 
space already occupied ; and this in fact is 
what I conceive happens ; not materially, 
but kinematically. For though we do not 
here introduce matter, we do, as I shall 
hope to show, introduce motion. 

IV. 

To do this we must again have recourse to 
ourselves, and diagnose, if we may, our own 
spirit. 

Now on looking into ourselves to see what 
ourselves may be, of what are we made 
aware ? For my part I am conscious of a 
kaleidoscopic series of thoughts. These suc- 
cessive dissolving views of mine seem to me 
to have about as much inter-connection as 
kaleidoscopic combinations generally, and I 
seem to have about as much influence over 
their appearance as I should have over those 
of that delightful but unpredicable instru- 



NOUMENA. 299 

ment, if by attention I could induce it to 
evolve along some slightly definite line. In 
other words, I am conscious at first sight of 
what we call ideas and will, and that the 
latter has a certain limited effect upon the 
former. 

My next discovery is that this power of 
my will is not a directly creative force at all. 
Not only can I acquire no new mental prop- 
erty by simply willing to have it ; I cannot 
even lay my hand on what, is already my 
own, when I would. For I can neither think 
a new idea by direct exercise of will, nor can 
I directly recall a memory when I please. 
All I can do is hold on to, or let go, what 
my stream of thought is kind enough to pre- 
sent me with. By choosing to attend to any 
particular idea that chances to come along, 
I allow that idea to beget others after its 
kind ; an opportunity of which it instantly 
avails itself. If I pay no attention to it, it 
promptly goes out. And this is absolutely 
all I can do. In this pitifully feeble fashion 
I manage to live, move, and have my being 
in the firm belief that I could do almost 
anything if I pleased. 

Will then, consists in the exercise of 



300 OCCULT JAPAN. 

selective attention. I choose to attend to 
one thought rather than another, and then I 
do attend to it. But though will in action is 
thus all selective attention, all selective at- 
tention is not will. For on further scrutiny 
of my stream of thought I am made aware 
rather startlingly that will meddles with it 
uncommonly little. Observation shows me 
that the like is true of my fellows. Indeed, 
the greater part of all our lives is made up 
of will-less action, of simply thinking the 
act and then doing it without any exercise 
of will at all. Yet we are not conscious of 
being our own on-lookers merely. On the 
contrary, we feel very poignantly that we live 
in this pageant that unrolls itself before the 
mind's eye. We feel this because selective 
attention is busy all the while, whether we 
will or no, and we are quite aware that it is 
thus at work involuntarily. 

In the case of this involuntary attention, 
the power behind the throne seems to be 
quite simply the interest the particular idea 
possesses for us. If the idea appeals to us, 
we attend to it in spite of ourselves. We 
can, indeed, often catch ourselves led pleased 
captive thus to some fascinating thought, 



NOUMENA. 30I 

remonstrating impotently as it drags us after 
it. It rivets, as we say, our attention. 

In short, involuntary attention is simply 
the dynamic outcome of the idea. The idea 
results as fatalistically in turning and fasten- 
ing our attention as a bright object does in 
rotating the fovea upon itself, or as the per- 
cussion of the cap does in the discharge of 
the gun. 

Now voluntary attention appears to differ 
from the involuntary kind not the least in 
attent, but only in intent. We seem in the 
latter case to choose which idea we shall 
press upon, the consequent pressure proving 
quite similar in both. 

In our search for the noumenal, then, in 
what we call will, we are driven back upon 
the act of choice alone. 

Now when we search for the cause of our 
choice we always bring up against some de- 
termining thought. Whenever we succeed 
in overtaking that will-o'-the-wisp, our own 
will, and triumphantly clutch it, we find in- 
variably that we have caught — an idea. 
Why am I willing to write these words, when 
as a matter of fact I am tempted to lie on 
the grass and gaze into the drifting islands 



302 OCCULT JAPAN. 

of cloud ? Because I decided yesterday 
that I would — an idea — or because it will 
be pleasurable later to have done so — an 
idea — or simply to prove to myself that I 
have a will — an idea again sarcastically bob- 
bing up. Every time that I think to have 
closed upon that elusive force, the will, I find 
myself left grasping a palpable idea. 

Yet we call ourselves conscious of the 
autonomy of our will. Nor will I yet say that 
we are not. What I will say is that we should 
be just as conscious of the fact were the fact 
not so. For that only is not free which is 
determined from without. Now whether the 
will were a noumenistic primum mobile, or a 
mere dynamic outcome of the idea, it would 
in either case be determined from within 
and would necessarily, therefore, seem free. 

But we may go further. Whatever will 
be, it is dependent for its existence in con- 
sciousness upon the existence of ideas. This 
is palpably instanced every day of our lives. 
For we are constantly conscious of ideas 
without will ; we are never conscious of will 
without ideas. Further yet, in these will- 
less yet conscious times, we are quite aware 
of ourselves as being ourselves. Will, there- 



NOUMENA. 303. 

fore, except as included in the ideas, is not 
of the essence of the Ego. For a thing 
which only pays us visits in this manner 
and is distinctly recognized as doing so can 
be no indispensable part of that innermost 
something each of us calls " I." 

Lastly, will appears to be quite uncomplex- 
ioned. Nobody pretends that his will dif- 
fers from his neighbor's, except in strength, 
that is, in amount. It differs in its applica- 
tion, but not in itself. It works in one man 
on one thing ; in another, on another : but 
that which works seems essentially the same 
in both. Will acts, in short, like any other 
impersonal force. Either, therefore, will is 
the I only as included in the Idea, or it is 
in no personal sense the I at all. 

Now the method of getting into the trance 
state has something very apposite and im- 
portant to say about all this. For the en- 
trance to that peculiar condition lies through 
an abnormal use of selective attention. By 
keeping the attention fixed long enough on a 
very insipid idea, or, better yet, upon nothing 
at all, out go both ideas and will ; that is, 
will can inadvertently bring about its own 
extinction when intent upon the extinction 



304 OCCULT JAPAN. 

of something else, namely, an idea. But of 
this truly astounding performance on the 
part of the will we need not go to trances to 
become astonished witness. For each one 
of us has experience of it, as a matter of 
fact, whenever he falls asleep. In lapsing 
into our nightly unconsciousness, it is our 
ideas that seem to go out directly, our will 
only seeming indirectly compelled to go 
with them. Baron Munchausen lifting him- 
self up by his pig-tail is child's play to this 
self-extinction of the will, if will be in any 
sense the self. 

V. 

Having thus eliminated will from any in- 
trinsic participation in the self except as 
included in the idea, we have reduced self to 
ideas. Of what ideas, then, is it made up ? 
Clearly not of the simple main idea of the 
moment. No one ever mistook his idea of 
a beefsteak for himself. But one's train of 
thought is not wholly composed of beef- 
steaks or philosophy, or any other chain of 
single thoughts. For first it is a palpable 
fact of consciousness that the object of 
consciousness is complex. Take the sim- 



NOUMENA. 305 

plest act of discrimination, for example. 
The Irishman who said he could tell two 
brothers apart when he saw them together, 
unwittingly hit the psychologic bull's-eye. 
For the only conceivable way of telling two 
things apart is by thinking them together. 
But the momentary me is more complex 
than this. There are, in the first place, a 
host of fainter ideas or suggestions of them, 
which the main idea drags up, attached to 
it, and secondly, there are the fading forms 
of previous ideas and the brightening forms 
of coming ones, side by side with the cul- 
minating thought of the moment. For it is 
no less a palpable fact that ideas take time 
to develop into distinctness, and even more 
time to fade again into oblivion. Dissolving 
views upon our cortical screen, the last grows 
ghostly as the next takes shape, and lingers 
some seconds ere it vanishes quite. It is 
this corona of past, present, and nascent 
thought, limning the central idea of the 
moment that gives that idea its setting, and 
us our sense of self. 

As a proof of this, an idea of our own 
which came to us unhaloed, however brilliant 
it may have been, is often subsequently rec- 



306 OCCULT JAPAN. 

ognized so little for our own that at times 
we feel conscientious scruples about claim- 
ing it. Such self-abnegation fortunately, 
perhaps, is rare. For an assumption of prob- 
ability induces us instantly to appropriate 
whatever has not upon it the stamp of 
another. Nor is there a more poignant cha- 
grin than to awake suddenly to the know- 
ledge, through some casually resurrected 
detail, that our yesterday's self-imputed epi- 
gram had been previously told us by Jones. 
Another's seal consists in those, often almost 
indescribable, concomitant details in which 
the foreign idea comes to us fringed, its 
setting in short. This differs entirely from 
the setting that surrounds our own self- 
suggested thoughts. At the time we heard 
the epigram, which we subsequently so sadly 
mistook, we were conscious not only of 
hearing it, but of hearing it ; afterwards 
this acoustic aura faded out, and there- 
fore when the idea reappeared it bore no 
identifying tag, and we insensibly took it for 
one of our own. For though our own 
thoughts come to us as a rule quite differ- 
ently fringed by a halo of their own, they 
sometimes have little or none, and the in- 



NOUMENA. 307 

stinct of possession causes us to impute all 
such to ourselves — until increasing exacti- 
tude teaches us distrust. 

VI. 

Now of what do ideas consist ? They 
consist, apparently, of molecular motion. An 
idea, in short, is a mode of motion ; another 
form of that fundamental, seemingly protean 
thing. 

But to see this we must first be sure just 
what we mean by an idea. Now we mean 
in ordinary parlance by an idea a conscious 
pulse of thought. A mere reflex action we 
do not associate with any idea. We even 
speak often of having acted from impulse as 
opposed to having acted from thought, and 
hold ourselves largely irresponsible in conse- 
quence. Now all such unconscious brain 
action, whether it be so-called reflex action, 
or so-called instinct or impulse, there is, in 
the present state of our knowledge, little 
difficulty in conceiving to be a mere mode of 
motion from one end of the chain to the 
other. Suppose, for example, I am walking 
along the street, and an inadvertent gnat 
runs full tilt into my eye. The eye instantly 



308 OCCULT JAPAN. 

closes, and proceeds to weep copiously, while 
still remaining tenaciously, much too tena- 
ciously, shut. Indeed, I have considerable 
trouble in opening the eye enough to get the 
insect out. Here the collision of the insect 
starts motion in the nerves that convey their 
wave of it to specialized ganglia, from which 
it wakes other ganglia that send word down 
to the eyelid to close. And the stupid eyelid 
obeys its immediate message to my great 
annoyance. Now this seems a perfectly 
clear case of machinery, one that works inev- 
itably and certainly. If I can manage to 
induce another gnat to repeat the thought- 
lessness of his predecessor, the performance 
of my eye will be also perfectly reproduced. 
I recognize this action for a bit of machinery 
so thoroughly that I do not identify myself 
with it. On the contrary, I am annoyed at 
the stupidity of the eye in persisting so 
obstinately to stay closed when, if it would 
but open, I could soon get the insect out. 
In like manner, instinct and impulse, in 
their turn, start trains of automatic action. 
Indeed, all unconscious cerebration can be 
thus explained on general mechanical laws. 
In similarly explaining other brain processes, 
the difficulty comes in with consciousness. 



NOUMENA. 309 

Consciousness is still held by most people 
to be a noumenon or noumenal phenomenon ; 
mind being conceived by them to be some- 
thing quite apart from brain, and this in face 
of the self-evident concomitance of the two. 
Now when we scan this distinction for an 
underlying difference, we find it to be due 
solely to man's desire for distinction. To 
put it unflatteringly, it is nothing but part 
and parcel of our innate human snobbery. 

Darwin's doctrine was held for many years 
by most religious folk to be impious, and is 
still so held by a few of them. It was 
thought to deny a special creator. What it 
really denied were special creatures. So far 
as God was concerned, all it did directly was 
to remove him to a proper height above his 
handicraft ; it was man whom it treated 
with scant respect by linking him with the 
brutes. Darwin committed the unpardon- 
able sin of recognizing his own poor relations. 
The justice of such recognition has now 
nearly universally been conceded, and to-day 
practically nobody disputes the essential kin- 
ship of all living things. But the snobbish 
instinct that opposed it still survives, as it is 
bound to survive so long as we remain 



3IO OCCULT JAPAN. 

largely creatures of instinct. For under a 
better name this instinct is nothing but a 
subtler part of the instinct of self-preserva- 
tion, the instinctive holding to all that makes 
for our individuality and the like antagonism 
to all that threatens it. Materially, this 
prejudice in favor of ourselves is now con- 
ceded to be misleading ; yet it still survives 
immaterially, that is psychically, in our unnat- 
ural divorce between brain and mind. For 
not to have them two makes us one with all 
the rest of the universe. Whether we sup- 
pose mind to be matter or matter mind, 
we become in either case part and parcel 
of the material world ; and so tenaciously, 
though unconsciously, do we hold to our sup- 
posed superiority to the rest of the universe, 
that we refuse to recognize the relationship. 
We are very loath to admit that we are kin 
to stocks and stones and other reputed sense- 
less things. This is the gist of the whole 
matter. Thought we deem to be something 
grand, while chemical action strikes us as 
ignoble ; although the one is every whit as 
inscrutably potent as the other. It is be- 
cause we really know nothing about the es- 
sence of either that we dare decide so defi- 



NOUMENA. 311 

nitely between the evolutionary merits of 
the two. 

Incidentally it is somewhat amusing to no- 
tice how thoroughly irreligious this supposed 
religious view is. For what warrant has 
man to prescribe laws to an omnipotent crea- 
tor and to turn up his human nose at one 
mode of creative action as unworthy to be 
used in his construction. The dualistic as- 
sumption thus carries with it, both scientifi- 
cally and sentimentally, its own disproof. 

The truth is that the only logical explana- 
tion of matter and mind is that the two are 
one ; and that the life-principle of the whole 
is some mode of motion. When we have, 
as we say, an idea, what happens inside us 
is probably something like this : the neural 
current of molecular change passes up the 
nerves, and through the ganglia reaches at 
last the cortical cells and excites a change 
there. Now the nerve-cells have been so 
often thrown into this particular form of 
wave-motion that they vibrate with great 
ease. The nerves, in short, are good con- 
ductors, and the current passes swiftly along 
them, but when it reaches the cortical cells, 
it finds a set of molecules which are not so 



312 OCCULT JAPAN. 

accustomed to this special change. The 
current encounters resistance, and in over- 
coming this resistance it causes the cells to 
glow. This white-heating of the cells we 
call consciousness. Consciousness, in short, 
is probably nerve-glow. 

Now we know by experiment that the heat 
of the hemispheres rises while conscious pro- 
cesses are going on, and does not rise to the 
same degree when processes of more reflex 
action are taking place in them. Further- 
more, we have reason to think that the mol- 
ecular action of the cortical cells must be of 
the same nature as that which takes place in 
the nerves, since by mere repetition of the 
action the one develops into something in- 
distinguishable from the other. For at each 
repetition of any brain action, consciousness 
of it grows less, till finally we cease to be 
conscious of it at all ; that is to say, the 
molecular change occurs with ever-increasing 
ease till at last it comes to be performed 
quite automatically and quite unconsciously. 

Phenomena of both normal and abnormal 
states of consciousness hint that this theory 
is correct, as I shall now try to make evi- 
dent. 



NOUMENA. 313 

That an idea is a force that shows itself 
as a mode of motion is borne out, to begin 
with, by the fact that its action conforms to 
that of all the other forces we know, in 
being, first, inevitable, and secondly, imper- 
sonal. This, so long as we regard ideas only 
in bundles, as my mind or your mind, is not 
apparent, but becomes evident so soon as 
we analyze mind into its successive simple 
parts, ideas, and consider them. 

Some years ago, Carpenter came across 
what he regarded as an astonishing abnor- 
mal mental phenomenon. It was this : that 
at times the mere thought of a bodily move- 
ment was able of its own instance actually 
to bring that movement about. Lotze im- 
proved upon this by showing that the phe- 
nomenon occurred with much more com- 
monness than was supposed. Finally the 
discovery was made, scarcely second to any 
in this age of discoveries, that this startling 
phenomenon was no abnormality at all, but 
the normal function in all its primitive nu- 
dity ; that every motor-idea, that is, every 
idea of a bodily movement, instantly pro- 
duces that movement when not inhibited by 
other ideas. 



314 OCCULT JAPAN. 

William James tells us that the instance 
that first convinced him of this general law 
was the way in which he eventually got up 
of a morning. In due course after waking, 
the thought came to him, " I must get up." 
But this idea instantly suggested the inad- 
visability of doing so. The bed was too 
cosy, the world too cold. So he lay where 
he was. How, then, did he ever get up ? 
Consciously, he never got up at all ; the first 
thing he knew, he was up. He had fallen 
into a revery upon the day's doings, when 
suddenly the idea that he must lie there no 
longer popped up again, and at that lucky 
instant, before it could start objection, had 
started him. 

Introspection will soon yield any one 
countless instances of the same thing ; but 
it is introspection of the second order of 
difficulty. One cannot simply stalk out into 
his thought preserves and pot his instance ; 
the fugitive character of the action obliges 
him to take it on the wing. For to catch it 
stationary, is, by its very nature, impossible. 
So soon as one thinks about his thinking, 
he is, ipso facto, engaged upon a different 
thought, namely, the thought of thinking, 



NOUMENA. 315 

a very different thing from simply thinking 
the thought ; and the second idea inhibits 
the action of the first. The only way to 
become aware of what one seeks is, by a 
process akin to the optical trick of detecting 
a very faint star, to look a little off it with 
the mind's eye. One has to play detective 
on one's self; by sly show of inattention, to 
fool one's self, as one would fool another 
into being unsuspiciously natural. He will 
then detect instances by the gross. All his 
impulsive actions will give him more or less 
complete examples of it. The expression 
" to go off at half cock " is nothing but an un- 
appreciated recognition of these very things. 
After thus recognizing it in one's self, he 
will perceive it in others. Any nervous 
man is a perfect museum of specimens. 
While he is listening to you, or even talking 
himself, his eye will fall upon a paper-cutter 
upon the table, and out goes his hand to 
play with it ; or, a book strikes him as being 
misplaced, and he must needs set it right ; 
or, he sees his pipe, and forthwith proceeds 
to fill it ; -and so forth and so on. Each 
new idea instantly produces in him its fatal- 
istic effect. 



3l6 OCCULT JAPAN. 

The reason we are not directly conscious 
of this force of our ideas is that one idea 
rarely has free play. A second idea starts 
to act before the first has finished and more 
or less inhibits the first's action, thus com- 
plicating the problem. If motions generally 
were not complex, no science would be 
needed to unravel them. 

So much for motor-ideas. But beside 
motor-ideas, there are other ideas not con- 
cerned with action at all, but with thoughts 
as such ; ideo-ideas, we may call them. In 
James's matutinal experience, the idea of ris- 
ing, instead of rousing him, roused first the 
idea of not doing so, by spontaneously call- 
ing up the consciousness of his cosiness, and 
this, doubtless, prompted the happy thought 
of a like snug inclosing of his last psychic 
find in some pithy phrase, and that brought 
up the subject of embalming generally, 
which reminded him that life was fleeting, 
whereupon it flashed upon him that he 
would better be up and doing, and up he got. 

If thoughts did not thus run their own 
trains, we should be simple automata, void 
of memory, and incapable of reasoning ; na- 
ture's puppets at sensation's string. 



NOUMENA. 317 

As one ideo-idea thus gives rise to an- 
other, so it may rouse a motor-idea which 
generates bodily movement, and the circle 
be complete. Some motion happens inev- 
itably in every case, were it only the inev- 
itable dissipation of its energy in the form of 
fatigue or general bodily excitement. 

VII. 

So much for the inevitable character of 
the action. The impersonality of it is, on 
scrutiny, no less apparent. For, personal as 
an idea seems to be in its manifestation, such 
association turns out to be purely fortuitous. 
Not only is an idea competent quite alone to 
institute another idea or a bodily movement 
in the man himself, — it will do precisely the 
same in another person. There are all de- 
grees of such inter-individual action, from 
the most partial persuasion to the most com- 
plete control. Its most startling examples 
are afforded by hypnotic subjects, who, at a 
word from the operator, act with even more 
than normal energy. But the same effect, 
less extravagantly accomplished, may be wit- 
nessed in every-day life. In certain heavy 
or preoccupied states of mind, a person will 



3 1 8 occul t japan: 

obey, automatically, a word from another, to 
be astonished the next instant at having 
done so. 

A like effect, in a partial form, is taking 
place between all of us all the time. The 
so-called personality of a man is nothing but 
the inter-individual action of his ideas upon 
other people. In its least complicated forms 
we are quite aware that it is merely the idea 
that acts, while the action is as often uncon- 
scious as conscious. Insensibly a man finds 
himself reproducing the ideas of those about 
him. Especially is this the case where fun- 
damental sympathy exists between him and 
his causative, and preeminently so when that 
person is the woman he loves. At times he 
startles himself by tones and gestures which 
he recognizes as hers, and then glows all 
over at the reflection. With corresponding 
annoyance will he catch himself reproducing 
the tricks of manner of some one he cordially 
despises. In the one case, the background 
ideas help as a mordant to set the dye ; in 
the other, the ideas themselves prove catch- 
ing enough. 

The fact is, that ideas are as catching as 
scarlet fever. We can no more escape hav- 



NOUMENA. 319 

ing them enter our minds than we can escape 
having material germs enter our bodies. And 
the only preventive against instant and indis- 
criminate imitation is constitutional mental 
energy. For, in normal states, the mind 
lies open to any action from without ; any 
foreign idea finds instant access through the 
usual sensational channels, and at once pro- 
ceeds to work, the possibly baleful effects to 
the host of such indiscriminate hospitality 
being tempered by the simple choking upon 
the premises of disagreeable outsiders after 
admission. The measure of success which 
the intruder achieves is determined by the 
amount of opposition it arouses. The more 
vacuous the host, the more the stranger has 
his own sweet way. In hypnotic subjects, 
where the mind is otherwise blank, any idea, 
if once introduced, receives actually more 
honor than it is accustomed to at home. A 
consideration, this, of the proverbial prophet 
kind, paralleled by the greater respect a 
policeman inspires in small boys who are 
unacquainted with him, or by the way in 
which a newspaper's editorials impress a 
simple public for their apparent imperson- 
ality. For the idea of another's personality 



320 OCCULT JAPAN. 

instinctively rouses opposition ; while, contra- 
riwise, that of one's own inspires one's self 
with distrust, so essentially modest is man. 
But with the hypnotized, personality in both 
phases lies dormant. For, in the hypnotized 
mind, when abandoned to its own devices, 
activity is nil. Hypnotic subjects, when left 
to themselves, and asked of what they are 
thinking, usually reply : " Of nothing." 

VIII. 

Ideo-ideal activity is a higher and later 
stage in the progress of mind evolution than 
motor -ideal action; response to objective 
stimuli preceding the subjective action of 
the mind upon itself, as the development 
from amceba to man testifies. Although the 
protozoon doubtless has consciousness of a 
rudimentary sort, by which he differentiates 
his own absorbing person from his no less 
engrossing food, his brain is his belly, and 
his one idea a kind of conscious digestion. 
His mind is a process of nervous pepsia, 
which, thanks to evolution, has unfortunately 
become nervous dyspepsia in such men as let 
their thoughts follow the same line ; so true 
is it that what is one creature's meat proves 



NOUMENA. $21 

another's poison. As we rise in the scale of 
animal life we find more and more compli- 
cated reaction upon stimuli from without ; 
then, finally, rudimentary reasoning. But 
even animals gifted with this last capacity 
usually prefer to keep their minds as empty 
as possible. The idyllic stupefaction of the 
cow in the stall, or of the dog upon the 
hearth-rug, betrays the vacuity which is 
theirs so much of the time, and into which 
they contentedly fall when not pricked to 
action by sensational spur. This beatific 
inanity of the brutes is close of kin to the 
Buddhist height of holiness, — Nirvana. 

When we come to man we find that even 
that so-called reasoning animal thinks as 
little as he may until pretty well up in the 
line of development. He is for the most 
part content to let circumstances pull the 
sensational trigger and make snap-shots at 
life. Even when he takes to thinking, it 
is thinking for things' sake that he usually 
indulges in. Thinking for thinking's sake 
is the employment of the highest few. 

As a side light upon this we notice how, 
when a person becomes weak from some 
drain upon the system, he grows less and 



322 OCCULT JAPAN. 

less self-controlled and more and more auto- 
matic to both sensations and foreign sugges- 
tions. 

Now clearly the amount of inly initiated 
activity measures the individuality of the 
man. For chance of change is greatly in- 
creased if, in addition to outer impressive 
diversity, inner diversity have a hand in the 
matter. The more individual a man already, 
the more individual is he bound to become, 
and as the rate of change depends on the 
change already effected, individuals must 
grow ever logarithmically apart. Marriage 
may retard this, but it may also accelerate it; 
and the last is undoubtedly its normal result. 
Otherwise, why has nature departed, in the 
propagation of the species, from the good old 
protoplasmic practice of identical fission. 

Less self and greater facility in becoming 
another, impersonality and proneness to 
possession, should therefore be found to- 
gether. And it is to be noticed that as 
development proceeds, nature gives with the 
gift of selfhood the means of guarding it. 
For the same increase of mental activity 
that constitutes the increased individuality 
enables the individual to maintain that in- 



NOUMENA. 323 

dividuality from disastrous attack and de- 
struction. 

IX. 

Before applying these principles to an ex- 
planation of the trance, let us see whether 
they explain that seeming inexplicability, the 
uncommon impersonality of the Japanese 
mind. If a lesser mental activity be the 
cause of a less differentiated individuality, 
signs of that lesser activity should otherwise 
be patent. Now when we look for them we 
find such signs to be numerous. 

As a friend of mine once put it epigram- 
matically in the heat of the moment, a Jap- 
anese does not think. Allowing for pardon- 
able exaggeration due the occasion, he really 
hit their state of mind on the head. Spe- 
cific evidence of the fact confronts one at 
every turn. 

One may, if he will, begin at the top, with 
lack of originality leading off the list, but 
instead of beginning at the top, he may as 
well begin at the bottom and mark the ab- 
sence of reasoning there. 

If in any western land you hail a cab and 
jump in without a word, the cab-driver be- 
fore setting out will ask you where you wish 



324 OCCULT JAPAN. 

to be taken. Indeed, this seems so self- 
evident a preliminary to driving you any- 
where at all, that it sounds supererogatory to 
chronicle it. But attempt the same thing 
in Japan. At any of the treaty ports jump 
into a jinrikisha as if in a hurry, and say 
nothing. Five to two off goes your man at 
a dog-trot for a couple of hundred yards ; 
then he suddenly slackens, stops, turns, and 
to his surprise, though not yours, inquires 
where you wish to be taken. Not till then 
did the idea strike him that he did not know 
his destination. He had at first acted on 
the impulse your jumping into the jinrikisha 
had given him, to go ; the afterthought of 
whither had not occurred to him. His first 
idea had instantly translated itself into ac- 
tion before it could wake a second thought. 

Instances of this in more complicated 
form are to be met with, of course, the world 
over. Witness the adventure of the shop- 
girl to whom darts in through the door an 
urchin with the announcement : " Marm ! 
your little boy has just been run over in the 
street ! " The poor shop-girl drops every- 
thing, rushes from behind the counter, bolts 
out of the door, and gets a couple of steps 



NOUMENA. 325 

down the sidewalk, when she suddenly stops, 
throws back her head, and with a laugh 
blurts out : " What a fool I am ! I have n't 
any little boy ! I'm not even married ! " The 
rascally urchin had sprung his mischievously 
explosive idea by hinging it upon the great 
instinct of maternity latent in every woman, 
and the idea had passed into the act before 
the rest of the brain was roused to inhibit 
the impulse. 

The next occasion afforded the stranger 
of remarking the Japanese want of reason- 
ing will wait upon him the moment he gets 
his eyes open to the numberless opportu- 
nities he offers the natives to cheat him ; 
opportunities of which they naturally avail 
themselves, a kind Providence having pro- 
vided strangers for that special purpose. 
But he will find some slight compensation 
for all he may be eased of by noting the 
inadequate manner in which Providence, 
doubtless with an eye to humor, has fitted 
these folk to such god-given avocation. For 
the essence of successful deceit lies in the 
apparent truthfulness of the false. The one 
should be a good counterfeit presentment of 
the other; otherwise it is useless. To carry 



326 OCCULT JAPAN. 

conviction, a story must be above conviction 
itself. For the art of lying consists in con- 
sistency. The Autocrat's dictum, "Be not 
consistent, but be simply true," if reversed, 
would make a good motto for lying, "Be not 
true, but be simply consistent." Inasmuch, 
therefore, as facts conspire against the liar, 
it is the part of a long-headed man to 
think out his whole story in advance. But 
this these brachycephalic people never do. 
When caught and arraigned, a non-committal 
"Don't know" keeps their counsel, and lack 
of self-consciousness keeps their face. But 
so soon as ever they adventure themselves 
upon a story, which sooner or later is bound 
to happen, they are gone. Their tale never 
holds together, because never carefully con- 
cocted beforehand to do so. It is suggested 
piecemeal on the spur of the moment, and 
consequently comes apart as easily as it was 
put together. One's facile satisfaction at 
thus exposing the culprit is marred only by 
the culprit's entire lack of discomfiture upon 
exposure. 

But daily intercourse with these people 
will furnish many pleasanter instances of 
the same artistic thoughtlessness. Servants 



NOUMENA. 327 

will follow with most exemplary fidelity any 
routine set them, and then become hope- 
lessly lost when occasion arises that calls for 
reasoning ; occasion consequent not upon 
foreign semi-domesticated ideas, but upon 
ones of broadly human intent. For that 
European customs should be taken topsy- 
turvy is matter of course. For your untu- 
tored " boy " to put the buttons in your 
shirt regularly outside-in every morning, or 
to hand you your waistcoat invariably inside- 
out, is simply the inevitable, if sad, conse- 
quence of generally antipodal habits. But 
pure forgetfulness of a duty and subsequent 
instant unassumed contrition at sight of its 
object, a not uncommon episode in far-east- 
ern housekeeping, knows no particular coun- 
try, and yet seems peculiarly at home in 
Japan ; the pathetic repentance turning the 
tragedy of your wrath into its own farce. 

Now when we rise from these daily dis- 
coveries to a more bird's-eye view of the 
Japanese character, we observe the same 
quality of mind otherwise patent. In the 
first place, the lack of originality of the 
Japanese is very striking after one has got 
over one's first dazzle at strange antipodal 



328 OCCULT JAPAN. 

sights. The student finds that what he at 
first took without question for the product of 
home construction, in truth came originally 
from abroad. They were adopted, and then 
adapted, these delightful ways of doing 
things. Modification of foreign motif, modi- 
fication always artistic, and at times delight- 
fully ingenious, marks the extent of Japan- 
ese originality. Now absence of originality 
is but another term for absence of innate 
activity of mind. For the one is father to 
the other. But when energy to coruscate is 
lacking, action continues in the easier round 
of routine. Only in more evolved minds do 
ideas bud in profusion, and they do so just 
in proportion to the degree of development 
of the mind. So that a superior mind is not 
only ahead in the race, but is advancing at 
a proportionally rapid rate ; a fact which 
offers small consolation to those who hap- 
pen already to be behindhand. 

A general incapacity for abstract ideas is 
another marked trait of the Japanese mind. 
This, joined to a limited reasoning power, has 
made would-be far-eastern science as funny 
as far-eastern art is fine. Before the nation 
went to Dame Europe's school, its criticism 



NOUMENA. 329 

was comic. Far-oriental treatises read ex- 
cellently well in spots, from such antipodal 
point of view ; the very dry desert of thought 
being occasionally relieved by unintentional 
oases of humor. The commentators give us 
admirable instances of this : one of them 
gravely explaining Shinto' s lack of a moral 
code by the conclusive statement that only 
immoral people need moral laws ; while 
another in all seriousness derives neko t 3. 
cat, by a kind of protoplasmic fission and 
subsequent amalgamation from the first syl- 
lables of nezumi konomo, words which trans- 
lated, signify " fond of rats," which is much 
as if one should assert " poet " to have been 
evolved by a sort of shorthand from "poten- 
tial etymology." 

Indirect evidence of the same lack of ideal 
activity is shown by the uncommon imita- 
tiveness of the race. For to have a foreign 
idea act with the imperative instancy observ- 
able in Japan argues a dearth of native 
incumbents to dispute it possession. You 
shall soon be given plenty of instances of 
this proclivity, of a personal nature. Indeed, 
this sincerest kind of flattery eventually 
grows just a trifle flat from mere excess of 



330 OCCULT JAPAN. 

expression. It begins at home and spreads 
out into the farthest suburbs of your polite 
acquaintance. You begin to be aware that 
you are setting the fashion in things below 
as well as upon the surface. Not only do 
hats, the facsimile of your own last purchase, 
suddenly make their appearance upon the 
heads of your friends, but even your momen- 
tary tastes wake instant echo in the crania 
underneath. " It is very odd," one of my 
very nicest far-eastern familiars was never 
tired of saying to me as he suited the action 
to the word, "how I like whatever you like." 
This will sound of course like the simple 
quintescence of exquisite far-oriental po- 
liteness. But observation will show you 
that it is in truth something deeper. You 
will be convinced of the genuineness of the 
appreciation after you have been sufficiently 
its victim. 

As for your household, your peculiarities 
diffuse themselves subtly through it to be 
reproduced some fine morning in surpris- 
ingly incongruous settings. Your " boy," so 
soon as ever he contrives to get into the 
coveted foreign garb, appears before you 
strangely appareled, not simply in reproduc- 



NOUMENA. 33I 

tions of your habiliments, but clothed upon 
with your mannerisms and fitted with your 
very gait ; his evident innocence of intent 
alone convincing you that this is not all 
some put-up caricature. Never had you full 
conception of how peculiar your peculiarities 
were till you saw them donned by another. 
Indeed, the reproduction of yourself is car- 
ried so far that from being putative father of 
your whole household by patriarchal custom, 
you begin to question whether in some an- 
tipodally ex post facto fashion you have not 
become its father in fact. 

Lastly, the decorous demeanor of the 
whole nation betrays the lack of mental 
activity beneath. For it is not rules that 
make the character, but character that makes 
the rules. No energetic mind could be 
bound by so exquisitely exacting an etiquette. 
It must inevitably kick over the traces now 
and then till little or nothing of them were 
left. This a Japanese not only does not do, 
save as motived to foreign ways, but left to 
himself would have no desire to do. The 
stately quietism of all classes of old Japan is 
due, not to forms that make for tranquillity, 
but to that innate tranquillity of mind that 



332 OCCULT JAPAN. 

fashioned the forms. Among this stately 
people there is less activity of mind needing 
constantly to be curbed, It shows itself be- 
fore long-continued habit can have set its 
seal upon the man himself. He inherits it 
with the rest of his constitution. In Japan 
the very babies are unconscionably good. 

X. 

We now come to a consideration of the 
trance. To this sleep and dreams may make 
a fitting word of introduction. For the phe- 
nomenon of sleep and dreams are kin enough 
to those of the trance state to entitle this 
night side of our nature to be called the 
normal trance. 

There is a curious rhythm in our conscious 
life of which both the occasion and the cause 
is cosmic. Our spiritual life, in contradis- 
tinction to our bodily existence, is made up 
of disconnected bits, whose conditioning is 
emphatically of the earth, earthy. It is in- 
deed worth noting, that our minds should 
thus in a sense be more mortal than our 
bodies. For once during every rotation of 
the earth consciousness is snuffed out like 
the candle we extinguish to help us to the 



NOUMENA. 333 

act ; and though some men be so strong that 
they can sit up all night occasionally, they 
cannot continue to do so for many nights 
together. 

This nightly good-by to self and surround- 
ings would certainly prove startling were it 
a thought more rare. As it is, so little are 
we disturbed at the idea of it that we actu- 
ally assist at our own apparent annihilation. 
We not only put ourselves to bed, but usu- 
ally to sleep every night. We help nature 
close our eyes, and compose what is left of 
our minds to absolute inaction. To a cer- 
tain extent we thus hypnotize ourselves 
nightly. Indeed, as our minds grow less 
active with years, some of us find no diffi- 
culty in performing this feat in the daytime. 

All of which shows that the force which 
runs the brain machinery is regularly ex- 
hausted by action, and has to be as regu- 
larly recruited by rest. For that the force 
has the power to store itself up again is 
proved by the fact that we ever wake. 

So soon as mental activity has thus been 
reduced to a minimum, and we are sound 
asleep, the potential begins to rise. De- 
barred from flowing, the stream of thought 



334 OCCULT JAPAN. 

proceeds to accumulate a head for the next 
day. And in this manner the potential con- 
tinues to rise till it has reached so high a 
point that a tap from some sensational 
stimulus suffices to start action once more, 
and we wake. Doubtless we should eventu- 
ally wake of our own motion if we lay in a 
sensational vacuum. Practically this event 
rarely happens, because sensations of some 
sort or other are always knocking at our 
mind's door. But a less and less obstreper- 
ous one suffices to call us as time wears on. 
A knock that would have passed unnoticed 
in the middle of the night easily rouses us 
in the morning. Once started, the machin- 
ery is not long in getting into full swing. 

At least this is what happens in the per- 
fectly balanced mind, that character so com- 
fortable to himself, and so disappointing to 
his more enthusiastic fellows. In ideal equi- 
poise the whole mental energy, potential or 
actual, ceases approximately together, and 
starts again together. All of us, however, 
have probably been abnormal enough at 
times to have dreamed dreams. Now dreams 
are interesting things ; interesting not only 
for what they show us, but far more inter- 



NO U MEN A. 335 

esting for what they intrinsically are. For 
they are twilights of thought, the dawn glim- 
merings of inner light before that be risen 
above the horizon of full sensibility. This 
half-way state of mind throws not a little 
light on clearer states of consciousness by 
comparison. 

Dreams betray a midway condition of 
mental activity, where action has reached 
the point of conscious internal, but not yet 
of conscious external, discharge. Our dream- 
life takes place in an ideal world within, upon 
which any outer sensation is permitted to 
enter only under some disguise. Whence 
the visitant came we are not aware, for we 
only take cognizance of it after it has donned 
a transformation to suit the mental scene it 
finds there. Our body may perchance turn 
over in bed, but in consequence we grace- 
fully float from the top of a precipice to the 
bottom, and find ourselves unharmed. 

The next peculiarity idiosyncratic of dreams 
consists in their seemingly irrational irra- 
tionality. In our dreams the most unlikely 
people do the most impossible things, in the 
most easy, credible manner. A thread of 
apparent causation connects one act with the 



336 OCCULT JAPAN. 

next ; and the phantasmagoria rolls cheer- 
fully on, breaking all the dramatic unities in 
its passage, in the most natural way in the 
world. In our deeper dream states the whole 
seems real ; it is only in our less dense ones 
that wonder begins to mingle with the show, 
as a looker-on, who doubts without exactly 
disbelieving. We have a dim sense that all 
is not right without quite realizing that any- 
thing is wrong. 

Now the explanation of this seems to be 
that in dreams our thread of thought is com- 
paratively fringeless. Motion in the mind 
is confined largely to one line, a very crooked 
line, but a simple one. As the current 
passes along, each idea starts the next, the 
one most easily associated with it at the 
moment, without rousing much in the way 
of side ideas to play critic to its creations 
and throw unpleasant doubts upon its credi- 
bility. 

Such action as this shows that the whole 
brain is not yet roused to that pitch of po- 
tential where motion takes place with normal 
ease. The current encounters inertia in its 
passage, and in place of spreading into side 
tracts is confined to the easiest path of dis- 



NOUMENA. 337 

charge. But that there should be any cur- 
rent at all proves that some part of the brain 
has risen to the necessary pitch of possi- 
bility before the rest of it. Now what part 
has done so, and why ? 

If we consider the motifs of our dreams 
we shall find them, when not directly trace- 
able to boiled lobster, to be due to the play 
either of very habitual ideas or of ideas that 
had last preoccupied us before we fell asleep. 
The lover dreams of his mistress, the mer- 
chant of his transactions, the scientist of 
his discoveries. Each dreams after his kind, 
because the habitual idea is in action so 
much of the time that its train of cells has 
become specially permeable to the current 
and vibrates upon slight provocation. For 
the same reason, the idea that preoccupied 
us before we fell asleep is the one which, 
from having just been in action, is easiest 
set in action again. 

The motion once started passes out along 
those associated channels which, under the 
then conditions, offer least resistance to its 
passage. But as the brain, as a whole, is 
still sluggishly inert, the current rouses no 
side motion to speak of in the process. 



338 OCCULT JAPAN. 

The result is rather a lightning-like zigzag 
through the mind than a general illumina- 
tion. This accounts for what we call in- 
consequently enough the inconsequence of 
dreams. For dream inconsequence really 
means too absolute ideal consequence. 
Each idea fires the next, and only the next. 
That we believe everything that comes along, 
and see nothing odd in so doing, shows that 
side considerations are not roused. For it 
is our side-thoughts that cause us to comment 
upon our leading ones. In dreams we are 
for the moment men of one idea, with the 
usual monomaniacal result. Purely sensa- 
tional starting-points, a la lobster, rouse in 
the same way such simple dream trains that, 
destitute of their accustomed fringe, we fail 
to recognize them for the sensations they 
are. 

In our deeper dreams we have not even 
those adumbrations of other thoughts which 
so commonly give us ghostly warnings in 
our waking state. This makes us fall easy 
dupes to the deception. For where only one 
idea exists it must inevitably seem true for 
want of possible contradiction. It simply 
is till it is contradicted. As we get nearer 



NOUMENA. 339 

the waking point, the inertia grows less till 
side motion starts and summons obscure 
shapes of thoughts to hint dimly at delu- 
sion. 

This theory as to what consciousness is 
affords explanation of another peculiarity 
about dreams which seems at first to defy 
comprehension, and certainly is inexplicable 
on the ordinary dualistic theories of the 
thing — their vividness. It is matter of 
every-day notoriety that dreams are often 
extremely vivid, and commonly exceed in 
vividness like events of waking life. That 
they quickly fade out does not detract from 
the fact of their vividness at the time of 
their occurrence. Now the dualistic theories 
that consciousness is a thing apart from 
brain processes, its directing power, accord- 
ing to the spiritualists, and its complaisant 
handmaid, according to the materialists, 
neither of them can account for this. For 
if consciousness be, as William James would 
have it,, a loader of vice in the game of life, 
she shows herself here to be an utterly un- 
principled gambler ; inasmuch as in dreams 
she actively abets delusions in the most 
seemingly ingenuous manner, and pro tanto 



340 OCCULT JAPAN. 

makes us go mad. Nor, on the other hand, 
can consciousness be mere concomitant of 
brain processes, for if we have here simply 
a case of increased current, why is not the 
rest of the brain roused, and if we have not 
a case of it, why are the ideas that are roused 
more vivid ? That the dream current might 
occasionally be stronger than a waking one 
is possible, but that our dreams should usu- 
ally seem more vivid than our every-day 
waking experiences, which is certainly the 
case, is to credit nature with a strange lack 
of economy in the running of our psychic 
affairs. 

But there is a worse dilemma yet for the 
dualists. They stand confronted by this 
question : Why should consciousness be 
present as markedly both when we have rea- 
son to suspect the current to be strong, in 
times of passionate excitement, as when we 
have reason to believe it weak, in times of 
torpor? For of both these phenomena we 
have instances. In times of excitement, 
we strangely recall forgotten things ; and 
so we do in times the opposite of excited. 
Extremes here emphatically meet. 

But if consciousness be the effect of brain 



NOUMENA. 34I 

friction, the heat, as it were, evolved by par- 
tial stoppage of the current, we see at once 
that this should develop both when the cur- 
rent is increased, the resistance remaining 
the same, and when the resistance is in- 
creased, the current continuing as before. 
We ought, therefore, in dreams, to find great 
vividness of impression side by side with no 
impression at all ; which is just what we do 
find. Though the stream of thought in 
dream-states has probably less head to it, 
the increased resistance enables it to pro- 
duce as much commotion. We may parallel 
the action by that of an electric current, 
which, when great, will make even a con- 
ductor of slight resistance glow, and when 
feeble, will make one of great resistance do 
the same. At present, this is merely a sug- 
gestive analogy ; but it may turn out truer 
than we imagine. 

The theory here advanced explains, there- 
fore, the at first strange anomaly, that both 
an unusually strong current and an usually 
feeble one may alike produce an unusually 
vivid consciousness. For vividness follows 
either an increase in the current or an in- 
crease in the resistance. 



342 OCCULT JAPAN. 

Conditions of brain torpor other than 
dream -states display similar phenomena. 
For a general tiring of the brain is not the 
only way, as we know, of bringing brain 
torpor about. Many drugs will do it, prob- 
ably by directly numbing the molecules of 
the cortical cells. Chloroform, laughing-gas, 
flowers at a funeral, will all temporarily take 
a man out of the world — to say nothing of 
the every-day effect of wine. But side by 
side with the general torpor these things 
induce, goes a heightened consciousness 
along particular lines, if it be no more 
than a consciousness of one's emotions. 
This chiaroscuro of consciousness has all 
the unreal reality of the lights and shadows 
thrown by a carbon point. Opium, for exam- 
ple, is delectable, not more for the peculiar 
ideas it gives a man than for the poignancy 
of them. And we all know, by observation, 
at least, how loving or quarrelsome men grow 
in proportion as they grow unreasonable, 
under the influence of wine. 

Some dreams we remember after waking. 
If we did not do so, to a minimal extent at 
least, we should not know that we had ever 
had them. Possibly, therefore, some vanish 



NOUMENA. 343 

with the fashioning, or if afterward partially 
recalled, pass unrecognized for strange, in- 
explicable impressions. Those that we do 
remember we shall find are hinged on to 
our waking life by the continuance of an 
outer sensation common in part to both 
states. Were it not for such link, it would 
be mere haphazard if we struck them again. 
For their train of association is not one 
likely to recur under normal conditions. 

XI. 

But besides the daily running down of the 
whole brain machinery to sleep, due to the 
using up of the potential energy of the cells, 
or its slowing down artificially through the 
effect of certain drugs, it is possible to bring 
brain action to a dead point by a simple 
exercise of will. By shutting one's bodily 
eyes, or by keeping them fixed upon some 
uninteresting thing, while at the same time 
shutting one's mind's eye, or keeping it 
similarly fixed upon some insipid thought, 
brain activity may be brought to a strangely 
sudden stand-still. It is by this portal that 
the subject passes into the trance state. 

Of trances, we may distinguish two kinds : 



344 OCCULT JAPAN. 

the hypnotic trance, and the possession 
trance. The two differ markedly, both in 
their physical and in their psychic symp- 
toms ; while at the same time bearing a 
strong family resemblance to each other. 
To an unsympathetic bystander, the subject 
of the one seems an idiotic automaton, while 
the subject of the other appears raving mad. 
We will take up the hypnotic variety first. 

To an outsider nothing marks that critical 
point when the subject's statuesque immov- 
ability passes from the voluntary into the 
involuntary state. It simply was the one 
and is the other ; a passing over as indistin- 
guishable as the traveler's crossing the line, 
known only by the change of pole round 
which all things seem to turn. 

If left alone the subject remains in his 
mummified state till at last he comes to of 
himself. If, however, while in the midst of 
it he be addressed by the operator, instantly 
certain striking phenomena follow. Out 
of a lethargy seemingly too deep for any 
stimulus to stir, he suddenly responds to 
the operator's word with the instantaneity 
of mechanism. He not only wakes to life 
again, but as soon appears to a most peculiar 



NOUMENA. 345 

phase of it. For though he responds to the 
hypnotist as if he had been simply waiting 
to do so, his immediate response made, he 
sinks back once more into passivity. His 
action would seem merely the effect of mo- 
mentum impressed from without ; as if the 
hypnotist had given his mental machinery a 
shove which had carried him a certain dis- 
tance, and whose impetus had then been 
gradually dissipated by the friction of the 
parts. This momentum gone, he becomes as 
before — inert. He possesses apparently no 
initiative of his own. 

While the foreign momentum lasts he 
acts with a perfection of performance real- 
ized in some machines, but not by conscious 
man. What he does he does far better than 
the best of which he is capable in his nor- 
mal state. And he hesitates at little or 
nothing. His action is kin to the somnam- 
bulists who will walk on ridge-poles and the 
edges of precipices without fear and with- 
out falling; only that whereas the sleep- 
walker does so of his own motion, the 
hypnotic subject does so at the suggestion 
of another. And the hint needed to start 
him is at times inconceivably slight. What 



346 OCCULT JAPAN. 

a bystander on the alert quite fails to notice, 
the hypnotic subject, to all appearance sunk 
in stupor, perceives and acts upon at once. 

Side by side in the hypnotized with such 
trigger-like action toward his hypnotist goes 
in the initial cases an utter deadness to 
everything and everybody else. For him 
nothing exists but his hypnotizer. Through 
this person's fiat, and only through it, may 
anything enter the subject's world. At a 
word from this man other things and other 
people are perceived, either when directly 
pointed out or when indirectly involved in 
the execution of the suggestion itself. They 
can also be made to remain incognito by 
the same process. Still further, imaginary 
things can be made to seem real to the 
subject; their non-existence in fact forming 
no bar to their existence in his conscious- 
ness. If the operator says they exist, for 
him they do exist. In the full hypnotic 
state this is no mere nominal acquiescence, 
for the subject will go on to detail their 
characteristics and retail their subsequent 
actions without further prompting, showing 
that to him they are thorough-going realities. 

Now this abnormal action of the mind in 



NOUMENA. 347 

the trance state seems most explicable as 
follows. By the enforced inaction or induced 
tiring of the brain cells in action at the time 
of lapsing into unconsciousness, all activity 
in those cells ceases, while the rest of the 
brain, being inactive already and being shut 
off from outward stimulus, remains inert. 
Furthermore, the stopping of action in the 
cells acting at the time seems to bring the 
whole brain to the dead-point ; which is 
logical since apparently it is only these cells 
that are vibrating at the moment. After 
the stoppage a time is necessary to raise 
the potential to the point of overcoming the 
inertia. Now if all the cells were at the 
same potential, this state of lethargy would 
continue till the whole brain eventually 
woke up. But the cells are not all at the 
same initial potential ; some are nearer the 
activity point than others. Especially are 
two kinds of cells at a higher potential than 
their fellows : those connected with habitual 
ideas and those connected with ideas pe- , 
culiarly poignant at the time. It is to the 
awaking to action of one of this latter class 
while yet the rest of the brain still stays 
torpid that the peculiar phenomena of the 



348 OCCULT JAPAN. 

hypnotic trance are probably due. The 
initiation idea thus resurrected is the idea in 
the subject's mind that the operator will have 
a certain indefinite but all-effective power 
over him when he shall have lapsed into the 
trance. It is not necessary that this impres- 
sion should reach the level of full belief ; a 
bare fear that he may be thus controlled is 
enough. That the mere idea of it should be 
present to the person is all that is neces- 
sary. Now such idea is the last poignant 
idea in the subject's mind before he com- 
poses himself for the trance. Consequently, 
after he has entered the trance state it is 
this idea that is nearest the point of pass- 
ing over into action and that, as the whole 
potential rises, passes over first. Thus it is 
the idea which the subject carries with him 
into the trance that becomes the dominant 
idea of the trance itself. 

Now the fact that this idea alone is at 
the necessary potential to be stirred ex- 
plains the insentience of the brain to all 
other stimuli. The brain cells connected 
with it alone are in a condition to be affected 
from without ; all others are affected only 
as they are connected with them. Nor are 



NOUMENA. 349 

these secondary ones as easily stirred by the 
first as they would be in normal life. The 
brain cells are all abnormally torpid. In 
consequence, as the motion passes along them 
very little side action is roused, and, as it is 
the ramifying side-thoughts that make com- 
parison possible and constitute judgment, 
the hypnotic subject sees no incongruity in 
his actions and performs each with a self- 
abandonment to it that insures a perfection 
of performance unattainable in his complex 
normal state of mind. 

The force of the habitual ideas makes 
itself felt by hindering and even preventing 
the performance of a suggested idea that 
conflicts with the subject's character. In- 
deed, other things equal, the grooves of 
temperament are followed by the train of 
thought. Less force is necessary to set 
them in motion. Not only is the subject's 
action under a suggested idea in keeping 
with his character, but it is impossible to 
get him to do things which are abhorrent 
to it. To induce a subject who is not 
essentially depraved to commit murder, for 
example, is practically beyond even the oper- 
ator's power. 



350 OCCULT JAPAN. 

We have parallels to such semi-spontaneity 
of action of an habitual idea in every-day 
life. In a preoccupied state of mind we 
engage upon some act only to wake to find 
ourselves doing not the thing we started to 
do, but the habitual one. I knew a man 
who, having come home late and gone up- 
stairs to dress for a ball, which he proceeded 
to do mechanically, suddenly found himself 
in bed. The preparatory taking off of his 
clothes had started the machinery, which, in 
default of supervision, had run then itself 
and fatally done the habitual thing. 

Of peculiarly poignant ideas we all know 
countless examples of the persistent manner 
in which they turn up in season and out of 
it. They are forever showing their faces 
amid the ever - changing crowd of other 
thoughts. 

That the hypnotic subject seems to be on 
the lookout for everything connected with 
his hypnotizer is of course a purely uncon- 
scious one. It is paralleled in waking life 
by the exceeding sensitiveness of any acute 
idea to anything connected with itself. The 
lover, the politician, the burglar, are alive to 
actions related to their quest which to other 



NOUMENA. 351 

mortals would pass unnoticed. We all catch 
our own name uttered in a conversation to 
all the rest of which we have been apparently 
quite oblivious. The exceeding sensibility 
of the entranced to the acts of the operator, 
joined to absolute insentience, so far as ap- 
pears, to irrelevant matter, need not surprise 
us, since we are all hourly doing the same 
thing. It is only the degree of completeness 
with which it is done that differs sufficiently 
to startle us. 

The relative sensibility of the hypnotized 
toward his hypnotizer, side by side with his 
complete insensibility toward all else, may 
thus be accounted for; but there is a further 
exhibition of sensibility that he shows which 
is as startling as it is inexplicable on the 
generally received theories of the subject. 
This is the surprising vividness of his con- 
sciousness of things of which he comes to 
have any consciousness at all. We have 
seen an adumbration of this in dreams, but 
in the case of the hypnotized it fairly rises 
into the region of the marvelous. Like 
dreams, it is evidenced by the general vivid 
character of the subject's experiences, but 
unlike them it is further borne direct witness 



352 OCCULT JAPAN. 

to by mental acts so out of every-day experi- 
ence as to lead hastily credulous persons to 
attribute them to some sort of supernatural 
power. For the hypnotic subject will dis- 
play an amount of knowledge of which in 
his normal state he is known not to possess 
even the rudiments. Sometimes his appar- 
ently supernatural insight can be traced to 
the resurrection of memories faint at the 
time of their experiencing and long since 
lapsed ; but sometimes it is due to the actual 
ex post facto creation of consciousness out of 
brain processes of which there was no con- 
sciousness at the time of their occurrence. 

Now our present theory, whatever its 
merits or demerits may be, is at least able 
to give an explanation of this phenomenon. 
If consciousness be nerve-glow, a local mo- 
lecular change of the cells due to a forced 
arrest of the neural current from temporary 
or permanent impermeability of path, it is 
precisely in the generally torpid brain of the 
hypnotic subject that it should be most 
acute. That his brain generally is torpid is 
shown by the fact that action does not spon- 
taneously take place in it. When, however, 
a current is induced from the only starting- 



NOUMENA. 353 

point possible, the suggestion of the opera- 
tor, and turned into the desired channel, it 
traverses a path whose resistance is much 
above the normal. Instead, therefore, of 
gliding rapidly along, it soon expends itself 
in overcoming the friction it meets, causing 
in the process a glow of the successive cells 
which we call consciousness. The current 
tends, of course, to make the molecules of 
the cells vibrate as they did before rather 
than in some perfectly new combination, but 
it finds unwonted difficulty in making them 
vibrate at all. The result is that the old 
combination of cell action is resurrected 
with accompaniment of consciousness ; that 
is, we have an idea where before we had only 
its latent possibility. Whether this be the 
revival of a lapsed memory, or the evoking 
of an actual bit of brand-new consciousness, 
is mere question of degree. The greater 
the resistance, short of stopping the current, 
the greater the current's, so to speak, crea- 
tive power. 

That this is due to the increased resist- 
ance, and not to an hypothetically increased 
current, is further evident on considering the 
alternative. For if the current were greater 



354 OCCULT JAPAN. 

than under normal conditions would be the 
case, it should both continue longer and 
rouse greater side action along its course. 
But, as we know, it does the contrary of both 
these suppositions. It speedily expends it- 
self, and starts next to no side-thoughts in 
the process. It thus completely negatives 
an imputation of increased force. 

Another general phenomenon of hypno- 
sis proves the same relation of increased 
resistance to increased consciousness. As 
is well known, the events of the subject's 
normal life are both possible of recall and 
spontaneously remembered in the hypnotic 
state ; while, contrariwise, the hypnotic life 
is entirely hid from the man's normal con- 
sciousness. Now this fact, instead of imply- 
ing greater powers in the hypnotic state, as 
superficially viewed it seems to do, implies 
exactly the opposite. It is indeed but a 
more general instance of what we have just 
considered. For the permeability of a path 
depends, cceteris paribus, on the number 
of times it has been traversed. Now the 
hypnotic or possession paths, having been 
comparately little used, are relatively less 
permeable than the normal ones. Conse- 



NOUMENA. 355 

quently an hypnotic path is not likely to be 
entered in the waking state, the current pre- 
ferring its more habitual routes. Even if the 
hypnotic idea should reappear, it would prob- 
ably fail of recognition in the broad glare of 
the normal state, since in the twilight of the 
trance its associations were too few and 
feeble to give it fringe enough for identifi- 
cation. For like reasons, even suggestion 
will fail to resurrect hypnotic ideas, or iden- 
tify them if resurrected. The normal ideas, 
on the contrary, can be recalled in the hyp- 
notic state, because, unless blocked by sug- 
gestion, their paths are the most permeable 
paths there. Consequently that the hypnotic 
life can be made to include the waking one, 
while reversely the waking life cannot be 
made to include the hypnotic one, instead of. 
being proof of greater powers in the latter, 
is simply proof of less permeability of path. 

XII. 

From hypnotic trances we now pass to 
possession ones. 

So far as the subject is aware, the portal 
to both is the same. In a quite uncon- 
sciously similar manner to that purposely 



356 OCCULT JAPAN. 

taken by the hypnotic subject, the person to 
be possessed either shuts his eyes or keeps 
them fixed, while at the same time he fixes 
his thought on nothing. If he thus prop- 
erly focuses both kinds of attention, he soon 
goes off. 

In spite, however, of the apparent same- 
ness of method employed in both cases, the 
subject's symptoms as he lapses into his 
trance, and his subsequent actions in it, 
differ radically in the two. 

A throe marks the entrance into the pos- 
session trance, and a suppressed quiver ac- 
companies it throughout ; the hypnotic trance 
is entered imperceptibly, and the subject 
continues apathetic till instigated to action 
by a word or sign from the operator. Per- 
haps the most peculiar physical feature of 
the possession trance is the rolled-up condi- 
tion of the eyeballs, so rolled up that the iris 
is half out of sight. This position they hold 
throughout the trance, and the eye never 
winks, though the eyelids are constantly 
twitching. For the rest, their names suffi- 
ciently describe the two states, — the one 
subject seeming in truth possessed by a devil, 
while the other, if left alone, appearing to 



NOUMENA. 357 

sleep as he stands. It requires, indeed, no 
faith in the onlooker to see in the one an 
alien spirit acting and speaking through the 
man. Such is the instant natural inference 
from his looks and behavior. On the other 
hand, the hypnotic subject can hardly be 
said to have either looks or behavior till 
commanded to have them to order by the 
hypnotist. 

The one subject thus acts from spontane- 
ous impulse ; the other only of derivative 
accord. The next point of dissimilarity is 
that the sense of self differs entirely in the 
two. The possessed believes himself to be 
another person, the possessing spirit. The 
hypnotized continues to think himself him- 
self unless told by the hypnotist that he is 
some one else, upon which he promptly con- 
ceives himself that other person. 

In both trances such sensations only as 
are compatible with the hypothesis enter- 
tained by the entranced are allowed to enter 
consciousness. These are perceived with 
abnormal alacrity, so abnormal as to have 
suggested a possible explanation of clairvoy- 
ance. All irrelevant sensations are simply 
ignored. It is as if telegrams were con- 



358 OCCULT JAPAN. 

stantly arriving to a man from all parts of 
the world, and he should leave all but those 
from Chili unopened on his desk. That the 
senses and the lower centres do their work 
perfectly, and that it is in the hemispheres 
that the messages are laid aside unscanned, 
is proved clearly by hypnotic experiments. 
For in certain cases the subject can be 
shown to have carefully distinguished two 
things first, in order subsequently to ignore 
one of them. These last sensations may 
afterward be recovered. 

The same thing occurs in the case of the 
possessed. Violent sensations unconnected 
with the spirit of the trance, and even 
wounds inflicted in it, pass unnoticed. Pins 
stuck into the man are not felt by the god 
at all, though the pain of the prick continues 
sharp enough to be very disagreeably felt by 
the man on coming back again to himself. 
Yet when he does thus become aware of it 
he remains quite unable to assign its cause. 
On the other hand, sensations appropriate 
to the god may almost be said to be divined 
rather than ordinarily perceived, so alert to 
them is the entranced. 

In neither trance, under natural, that is, 



NOUMENA. 3S9 

unsuggested, conditions, does the man re- 
member anything of what happened in the 
trance after he has waked up. In the case 
of the hypnotic trance, a suggestion by the 
operator during the trance that he shall re- 
member it afterwards, will enable him to do 
so. As to the possession trance, I am not 
aware that it is ever remembered in the 
waking state, though I believe this could be 
done. Certainly it is not done in Japan. 
The man knows nothing of the god. 

Discontinuous, however, as the trance con- 
sciousness is from the normal one, in each 
kind of trances its own consciousness is 
continuous. The hypnotic subject remem- 
bers in subsequent trances what happened 
in former ones. So does the god. Some 
curious details of this I shall consider pres- 
ently. 

Agreeing thus as the two kinds of trances 
do in so many respects, it becomes all the 
more singular that they should differ so in 
others, entered, as they both seemed to be, 
by the same gate. In what, then, does the 
difference consist ? It consists, so I con- 
ceive, in the idea that dominates the trance. 

To explain it, we must look a little back 



$6o OCCULT JAPAN. 

of the immediate phenomena, for it is the 
power behind the throne of thought that 
does the business. Now in both trances 
the general state of the brain is the same. 
In both it is as a whole torpid, and in both 
action eventually takes place along certain 
isolated lines. The idea that first reaches 
sufficient potential to respond to an outside 
stimulus, or to stir of itself, is the idea that 
acts. This idea is the dominant idea of the 
trance. 

We have followed this out in the case of 
the hypnotic trance. We shall now see that 
it applies equally to the possession trance, 
and that the intrinsic differences in the 
dominant idea of each account for the differ- 
ent phenomena. 

Let us see what the dominant idea in each 
case is. The hypnotic subject enters the 
deadening processes leading to the trance 
with the idea — more or less definite, from a 
full belief to a bare fear — that in the com- 
ing trance the hypnotizer will have an irre- 
sistible power over him. That he will then 
lose his identity, will cease to be himself, is 
no part of this thought, except as uncon- 
sciously included in the power the operator 



NOUMENA. 36l 

may be able to exert. The person to be 
possessed, on the other hand, enters his 
trance under the firm conviction that he is 
about to become the god or the devil, or 
whatever else the possessing spirit is to be. 

Now each of these ideas proves exponent 
of what happens in their respective trances. 
In the one trance, the subject acts like a 
mind-mechanism worked at the will of the 
operator ; in the other, he acts, as the com- 
munity considers, like a god. 

That this is due to the dominant idea ris- 
ing first to potential possibility, is more or 
less demonstrable phenomenally. In the 
possession trance we can actually see the 
increasing effect of this rise. The statu- 
esque immovability preceding the trance is 
eventually shaken by a slight quiver, and 
gains till it culminates in the throe of pos- 
session. In the hypnotic subject, the rise is 
not directly evident. The character of the 
dominant idea accounts for this. The hyp- 
notic subject is possessed by a purely pas- 
sive idea, the idea of the eventual influence 
over him of the operator, which, as yet, is 
latent, and passes into action only on com- 
mand. His dominant idea never thus quite 



362 OCCULT JAPAN. 

peeps over the threshold of consciousness, 
but merely stands by to usher other ideas 
in. It gives them their pass, without which 
they would be refused admittance. In 
the spirit-possessed, action is spontaneous. 
There, the dominant idea actually takes pos- 
session of the otherwise vacated apartments 
of the mind and runs the establishment of 
its own motion, incidentally permitting no 
idea to come in that has not somehow busi- 
ness with it. Its energy, therefore, passes 
over of itself from the potential kinetic form. 
Its energy, also, is much the greater of the 
two. For to initiate action of itself shows 
more activity inherent in the idea than 
merely to respond to a shove from without. 
This explains the apathy of the general 
hypnotic state on the one hand, and the 
throe and subsequent quiver of the possess- 
ory trance on the other. 

If the energy of the idea be not kept up 
by appropriate stimulation, it gradually falls, 
as is shown by the lapsing of the subject, 
when left alone, into a state of coma. But 
the aptitude of the idea to act remains rela- 
tively the same. For, on renewed incanta- 
tion, the dominant idea again rises to a point 
of action before the rest of the brain. 



NOUMENA. 363 

Both entranced states thus differ from the 
normal condition, not in the mind's being 
curiously open, as at first one is tempted to 
think, but in its being curiously shut. For, 
in the normal state, unless some fixed idea 
chance for the time partially to have closed 
the avenues of approach, the mind lies open 
to all comers, incoming ideas as well as sen- 
sations, all of whom it eagerly welcomes, 
and then after admission quietly chokes 
such as on inspection it does not happen to 
fancy. In the entranced state, on the other 
hand, no idea is admitted at all unless per- 
sonally related to the possessing idea, and 
when once introduced is permitted full play 
in the premises. 

Whatever thus gains admittance through 
the dominant idea is, therefore, from meet- 
ing little or no opposition, all-powerful. In 
the perfectly hypnotized person, the slight- 
est hint from the operator produces instan- 
taneous and complete action. For, in that 
motionless mind, there are practically no 
counter-forces present to oppose it, nor are 
any such roused by its action to check it 
after it has started. There is nothing but it 
to act. Only when it clashes with another 



364 OCCULT JAPAN. 

visitor does any hesitation or difficulty re- 
sult. But the man's sense of his own iden- 
tity does not change, because it is not a part 
of the dominant idea that it should. When 
by suggestion an idea of such change enters 
his mind, identity changes at once. 

In perfect subjects there is no conscious- 
ness of constraint. It is only when the hyp- 
nosis is imperfect that side-ideas are roused 
enough to suggest the possibility of acting 
otherwise. The subject then becomes dimly 
aware of compulsion, without, however, hav- 
ing any definite conception of what that com- 
pulsion consists. He simply feels that he 
must do so and so ; and he does it. 

In waking life, a fixed idea will often mask 
itself in the same manner. We feel that we 
must act in a certain way, often in a very 
trivial way, against our will, as we say, yet 
without questioning for an instant that it is 
we who act. As a matter of fact, it is the 
idea that for the moment is the I ; and the 
faint remonstrance of which we are con- 
scious is due to such faint side-ideas as are 
roused by its action. 

But in the possession trance the dominant 
idea consists consciously in a change of iden- 



NOUMENA. 365 

tity. The consciousness in the entranced 
state throbs with the sense of this new per- 
sonality as waking life does with the sense 
of self. Consequently, all the possessed's 
thoughts, words, and actions conform to it ; 
none that do not finding foothold in his mind. 
The man does not simulate the spirit or the 
god. Mentally, he is the spirit or the god, 
and his mechanism, in so far as in him lies, 
responds in its performance. His is anything 
but a case of acting ; it is an absolute change 
of identity, the new ego being the man's con- 
ception of the god. Such may not be the 
god, but it also is not the* man. 

From all this, we perceive a certain paral- 
lelism between trances and dreams, with cer- 
tain divergences. In both the mind is inac- 
tive, except along a particular line. In both 
the illumination is lightning-like, and in both 
no general illumination resulting in a general 
judgment of things as they really are takes 
place, because of the current's failure to 
rouse side-thoughts. But in the trance the 
dominant idea is much stronger than in the 
dream, and persists through the whole of it 
as a ground for all other ideas. Especially 
is this so in the possession trance. And the 



366 OCCULT JAPAN. 

reason for this is more or less patent The 
idea that causes the dream is much less con- 
sciously absorbing than the idea that pos- 
sessed the possessed. The one is haphaz- 
ardly entertained, the other is purposed. 
Secondly, it is probable that the brain, 
generally, is much deeper asleep in the 
trance than in the dream. The fact that of 
our own motion we are so close to waking 
when we begin to dream implies this, and 
the easy consequence of one idea upon an- 
other in the dream state goes to back it up. 
Lastly, the possessing idea in the trance is 
repeated and realized again and again in 
successive trances. This strengthens it im- 
mensely. How much so, is evident from 
the great development observable in trances. 
A trance that occurs for the first time is 
usually very embryonic ; but by repetition 
the idea acquires momentum that rivals that 
of single-purposed waking action. 

Habit is just as potent in the trance state 
as in the normal one. In both lives a self- 
educatory process goes on, any action gain- 
ing proficiency by practice. As we have 
seen, divine development is as duly marked 



NOUMENA. 367 

in the Shint5 trances as human development 
in every-day man. 

Much of the supposed divinatory power 
of the possessed is attributable to the same 
cause that makes the hypnotic subject so 
supernaturally omniscient. The brain of 
any one is a register of sense impressions to 
a degree unsuspected by its owner. It is 
none too much to say that everything we 
have ever experienced is there, could we only 
get at it ! The possessed does get at it, or 
at some of it, and surprises himself quite as 
much as others by having done so. Whence 
his honesty in denying that it is he that does 
it and the natural belief of others in its su- 
pernatural origin. 

In conclusion it may be noted here how 
ill the self fares under these illusions and 
disillusions of the trance. That self can 
thus be snuffed out at a word from the 
operator, or by the mere idea of god in the 
possession trance, betrays it no transcen- 
dental thing. Self, indeed, would seem itself 
to be ; and the bundle of ideas in that mass 
of machinery, the brain, alone to constitute 
the I. 



368 OCCULT JAPAN. 

XIII. 

Certain differences between the Japanese 
possession trances and others of their kind are 
significant. To begin with, one peculiarity 
of the Shinto trance is the maezds connec- 
tion with it. This man is the official inter- 
mediary of the god, and he holds a curious 
intermediary position between the person 
spoken to in the mediumistic trance and the 
operator in the hypnotic one. He is the 
7iakodo, or go-between, of the whole transac- 
tion. He is the only part of humanity whom 
the god deigns spontaneously to recognize. 
He alone may speak to the god, and him 
alone the god condescends to answer. Any 
one else, however pious, who desires to con- 
verse with the god, must first be brought in 
rapport with him by the maeza. Until such 
rapport be established, the god pays the out- 
sider's remarks no attention. That he is 
not quite so deaf as he seems, however, is 
shown by his occasionally scolding the maeza 
for irreverential conduct on the part of such 
outsider. I blush to say that I never knew 
this to happen except in my own case, when 
engaged in testing the reality of the god by 



NOUMENA. 369 

making, too openly, a pin-cushion of him, or 
.otherwise treating him with what he took 
for disrespect. 

But the maeza does not affect the god's 
actions, and only incidentally suggests by 
his questions the current of the divine 
thought precisely as one person does that 
of another in every-day conversation. The 
wiaeza usually starts the topic, but the god 
is responsible for the replies. The maeza is 
thus, unlike the operator in the hypnotic 
trance, not the power behind the throne, but 
merely the master of ceremonies before it. 
In this he differs again from a person who 
has a sitting with a trance-medium, and who 
is not supposed to open his mouth except 
upon his own business. There is, however, 
a greater gulf between the god and the 
maeza, particularly pure as the latter is, than 
between the sitter and the informing spirit. 

We now come to a very suggestive dis- 
similarity between the Shinto possessions 
and all others. 

Of trances of the possessory sort there 
are manifold varieties to be found scattered 
over the surface of our globe. Believers 
grade them after the ethics of the possessing 



370 OCCULT JAPAN. 

spirits, a pious if not over-profitable criterion. 
In Japan, for example, the rank of the god is 
gauged by the knowledge he displays of his 
own family mythology, while in America pos- 
sessing spirits are valued for their proficiency 
in a certain milk-and-water philosophy, meta- 
physically tinctured of religion. The more 
milk-and-water their well of information 
proves, the purer proof-spirit is it esteemed 
to be. 

To science the spirits' morals would be of 
more consequence did they not so singularly 
mirror the morals of the race which the 
spirits are kind enough to possess. As it is, 
so remarkable a resemblance in ethical stand- 
ards between the immutable gods and ever- 
evolving man, observable at all times and 
among all peoples, proves too much for 
popular deity. Such concordance, further 
emphasized by the striking manner in which 
as a race advances in its conception of con- 
duct the moral development of deity keeps 
pace with the moral development of the dev- 
otee, hints that between the orthodox and 
the true divine comedy, the parts of creature 
and creator have unfortunately got reversed. 

The more abstract the conceptions of a 



NOUMENA. 371 

race grow to be, the more abstract become 
its gods, and in consequence the less they 
deign temporarily to inhabit mankind. A 
growing incapacity to conceive how a more 
and more abstracted god would act in -the 
concrete is indirectly responsible for this. 
Among aboriginal peoples the gods them- 
selves descend to embodiment in man ; 
among more evolved races the spirits of de- 
parted men take their place. 

But it is not simply in their morals that 
the gods show themselves in sympathy with 
their people. In their characters generally 
you shall see reflected the race character- 
istics. In Japan the gods are eminently 
Japanese. They are dignified, artistic, simple 
souls, of the most exceptional deportment. 
Their life is made up of one long chain of 
ornamental, if somewhat conventional, mo- 
ments. 

Especially is this agreement of gods and 
men conspicuous in that most interesting of 
Japanese traits — the race's unindividuality. 
As we saw, one of the strangest features of 
Japanese possession is the way in which 
several gods deign to share one trance. 
Now when this copartnership is closely scru- 



372 OCCULT JAPAN. 

tinized it will be found to afford proof of a 
curiously conceived impersonal kind of deity. 
It is not that to one unacquainted with 
the gods there appears at first sight to be 
a very strong family likeness between them, 
so strong as to imply no very marked in- 
dividuality in any, for such superficial re- 
semblance is common to every race in the 
eyes of others. It is in the character of 
the divine consciousness that the peculiarity 
consists. For the consciousness of any one 
god is continuous in successive trances, and 
the consciousness of successive gods is con- 
tinuous in any one trance. That is, in the 
person of the same man the god remembers 
what he did, said, and heard in different 
trances, and different gods remember what 
the others did, said, and heard in the same 
trance , while perfectly differentiating them- 
selves from those others. But different gods 
do not remember about each other in differ- 
ent trances. The first of these capabilities 
is of course the usual trance - memory, as 
self-identifying a one as the man's normal 
memory. The second shows that an indefi- 
nite idea of god underlies the several special 
manifestations of it. The third indicates the 
extent of this common bond. 



NOUMENA. 373 

That each god thus knows his own acts 
and sensations from those of every other 
god, in the same trance, and remembers his 
previous acts and sensations in successive 
trances, fulfills all the phenomena that we 
recognize as constituting an individual self. 
It is therefore only natural for it instantly 
and irrevocably to have been taken for such. 
On the other hand, that one god should have 
any idea of the actions of his predecessor 
when embodied, hints at a ground-work of 
unindividual self. 

The change of god evidently comes about 
by unconscious auto-suggestion. Certainly 
the subject himself has no inkling before- 
hand what gods will constitute his surprise 
party, if his seemingly honest profession to 
that effect is to be believed, and there is 
really no reason to doubt it. Nor is the 
change due to any suggestion on the part 
of the maeza, the official interviewer of the 
god. For the maeza asks no leading ques- 
tions on the subject ; he confines himself to 
asking after the fact who has come, and then 
to questionings about the cure of the disease, 
or other desired mundane or divine matter, 
quite apart from the personality of the god. 



374 OCCULT JAPAN. 

The auto-suggestion is of two parts, — the 
general idea of change, and its particular 
performance. The first is like the uninten- 
tionally induced hypnotic habits of the Sal- 
petriere. The gods have learned that they 
are expected to come in Indian file, and 
kindly do so accordingly. That they did so 
initially is due undoubtedly to the underly- 
ing impersonality of the race. 

That there is this general predisposition 
to rotation in office is proved by the earli- 
ness with which the change shows itself. It 
appears long before the possession is perfect 
enough for words. The boy whose divine 
development I instanced before was already 
several gods in turn, while as yet unable to 
talk as any. The particular change comes 
about from associations between the idea 
of one god and the idea of the other, con- 
tracted either in the normal or the entranced 
state, and then evoked in the course of the 
entranced's heavenly thinking. Sometimes 
the link becomes visible. A god will say 
that he is himself unable to answer a ques- 
tion put to him, and will report the matter 
to some higher god for solution, after which 
an attendant of the higher god descends. 



NOUMENA. 375 

This would seem to show that a sufficiently 
connective thought in one trance will pass 
over to become a part of the dominant idea 
in the next. A god may thus present his 
successor. 

Somewhat analogous to this, though not 
similar, is the way in which the control of a 
trance medium has been known to change. 
But this, so far as I am aware, has rarely 
happened in the midst of any one trance. 
The spirits spoken to change with kaleido- 
scopic activity, but the control itself is a 
tolerably stable spirit. 

Indifferentism to individuality crops out 
thus in the curious thread of impersonal 
god -head, mere god -head as such, upon 
which the several particular personalities are 
strung, because it is so fundamental a qual- 
ity of the race that it forms of necessity 
part of their every idea. 

The subject's dominant idea evidently con- 
sists not of the possession by any particular 
god, but rather of the prognostication of 
possession by deity in general. For were 
the idea of the individuality of the posses- 
sory god strong, it would not of itself yield 
possession of the premises to another. On 



376 OCCULT JAPAN. 

the other hand, it is no mere abstract idea 
of god, but rather a vaguely concrete gen- 
eral idea, accidentally clothed upon by par- 
ticularity. For the gods are successively 
individual enough, in spite of their hasty 
succession. In fact, the Japanese idea of 
god is kin to all the other Japanese ideas ; 
like their idea of man, for example, as it 
shows itself in their speech, the idea neither 
of a man nor of mankind, but just the idea : 
man. 

The dominant idea thus betrays a very 
curious state of mind in the possessed. 

Though the man's self has quite departed, 
the mere lessness of that self survives, and 
not only characterizes all subsequent ten- 
ants, but unites them by a sort of common 
lease. The individual has vanished ; but 
the race is left. 

Such a result, indeed, is what we should 
expect from our theory on the subject. For 
the race characteristics are the ones most 
deeply graven into the character of the in- 
dividual. They are the great arteries of 
thought, the well-worn channels through 
which the stream flows most easily. So 
easily does the current pass through them 



NOUMENA. 377 

that the thoughts it rouses there mingle un- 
consciously with a man's thinking most of 
the time. They constitute what we know as 
habitual ones in the normal state. When, 
therefore, the brain lies clogged in the gen- 
eral lethargy of the trance, these channels 
still remain relatively more permeable than 
the less pervious veins of more recently 
evolved sensations peculiar to the individual. 
Thus the activity that cannot wake the man 
wakes the race. 

This brings us to confront the atavistic 
character of the general trance state. A pri- 
ori, we have just seen that the state should 
hark back, and a posteriori that it does so in 
this particular case. But we have evidence 
that it is atavistic generally. The easy 
transition from one idea to another in the 
hypnotic state, the want of reasoning shown 
in it, the intentness and energy with which 
any given idea will be pursued one moment, 
only to be thrown over the next with a com- 
pleteness which is caricatural, are states of 
mind that recall childhood for comparison. 
The man has become a sort of grotesque 
boy again. Could all idees fixes be eradi- 
cated, that is, could we have the perfectly 



378 OCCULT JAPAN. 

normal man for subject, then if the operator 
could suggest some action colorless enough 
to let only native activity come into play, 
— ■ a purity of experiment practically unat- 
tainable, — we should probably, as the trance 
state deepened and the man lost himself, see 
him lose first his individual characteristics, 
then his family traits, then the habits of his 
clan, and so down, till only the broadly hu- 
man ones survived. The trance state would 
undo what evolution has done, and return to 
us a primeval savage in the body of an end- 
of-the-century man. But fortunately that 
most insipid individual, the normal man, 
whose mild portrait you shall see in any 
composite photograph, it is impossible to 
obtain. For the very essence of evolution 
consists in the survival of the slightly ab- 
normal. The spirit of the cosmos is itself 
one great idee fixe working itself out. The 
normality of the whole depends upon the 
abnormality of each part. To be a trifle one- 
sided gives each of us our chance. Indeed, 
nothing is easier than to show that were 
everything, as the Roman expression had 
it, smooth and round, nothing could ever 
have developed, just as without irregularity 



NOUMEN A. 379 

no motion could have existed in the solar 
system except one vast self-crushing in the 
sun. 

Thus idiosyncracies are a necessary part 
of us, but they are numerous and diverse 
in proportion to the height the individual 
development has attained. They are much 
less marked between man and man in Japan 
than among Aryan folk. The average Jap- 
anese more nearly approaches his own na- 
tional norm. 

This lands us in our investigation at an 
unexpected conclusion, to wit, that these 
gods really are what they claim to be. In 
Shinto god-possession we are viewing the 
actual incarnation of the ancestral spirit of 
the race. The man has temporarily become 
once more his own indefinitely great great- 
grandfather. It is a veridic incarnation, if 
ever there was one. If these his ancestors 
were gods in the past, gods they are that 
descend to embodiment to-day. 






























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